


The Tragic Commedia

by SharkbaitSekki



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Akechi Goro Has A Palace, Akechi has a palace AU, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Can be read as platonic or romantic shuake, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Exploring Akechi's past and his motivations, Gen, M/M, Not Your Typical Palace Infiltration, Past Child Abuse, Performing arts motifs and references, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protecting Goro's Freedom to Choose, Psychological Trauma, Recovery, Saving Private Goro, p5 royal, set within but no spoilers for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:08:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 61,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25999540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SharkbaitSekki/pseuds/SharkbaitSekki
Summary: With only a week left before Sae Niijima's deadline, Akira incidentally discovers that Goro Akechi has a Palace. Thus begins the race against time to save the boy suffering behind his countless masks, although whether he allows himself to be saved is a different story altogether.Stealing a heart is easy. Mending one is not.
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Amamiya Ren, Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist
Comments: 46
Kudos: 433
Collections: Quality Persona Fics, Skurrel's Personal Fanfic Recommendations





	1. Act I

**Author's Note:**

> The wiki says that Akechi was supposed to have a Palace in the game, so here's me pouring one out for the boys who didn't make it this far with us. RIP. 
> 
> So it's been 3 years since I wrote the Akira Palace fic, and I thought I was done with writing for P5, and then recently I finished Royal and the game left me FLOORED. It's an absolute masterpiece, and everything that we were missing in vanilla P5 is there. With vanilla P5, I was impartial to Akechi, but Royal really developed his character and gave us more opportunities to get attached to him, and like the fool that I am, I fell irrevocably in love with him given the opportunity. 
> 
> There's only one thing I do to characters I adore; I hurt them. 
> 
> So without further ado, here is my second contribution to the Palace AUs, starring our best boy Goro Akechi! This is set in the timeline of P5R, but there are NO SPOILERS for the Royal-exclusive content (except some minor references to Akechi's Confidant link events).
> 
> Enjoy!

_“All the world’s a stage,_

_And all the men and women merely players:”_

_William Shakespeare, As You Like it, Act II, Scene VII, lines 139-140._

\--- I ---

If you asked Akira what he would be doing during his year-long probation in Tokyo, he certainly wouldn’t have said committing crimes on a national scale. And yet, here he was, mask on, guns out, ready to steal hearts. Literally. 

Or, metaphysically, at least. 

“Shall we get going?” Makoto asked from where she stood next to him, uncertainly glancing at the lavish casino stretching out before her. She seemed insecure, and Akira didn’t blame her- this was her sister’s Palace, after all. Akira couldn’t imagine being in her shoes, preparing to launch an invasion on someone he cared for. 

“Take the lead, Joker.” Ah, speaking of similar things. Akira turned to face Goro Akechi, detective extraordinaire, and also his future killer, who was standing by his side, stretching. This was the first time they’d seen him in the Metaverse, and Akira was still having a hard time getting used to his thief costume. Akechi’s spirit of rebellion looked like a woodpecker. Akira was having a hard time taking him seriously. 

Well, it didn’t matter. As long as Akechi didn’t hinder their heist, he could wear whatever he wanted. With that thought, Akira waved his team forward, and they were off, into the casino of jealousy.

Just another regular Palace infiltration had begun. 

Except for the part where this one would make or break the Phantom Thieves for good. 

There was no longer any room for variables, nor failure. 

\--- II ---

The Phantom Thieves, sans Goro, of course, all knew that their newest member was a traitor from the moment he presented his ultimatum in the cramped back room of the school auditorium. Things became clearer as more evidence was uncovered by Futaba, until nearly all of them were convinced of Akechi’s character, and set in their decision to take him down. 

All of them except Akira, of course, because Akira was the one who spent the most time with him. He was the one who saw the sparkle of thrill in his eyes when they issued one another a challenge- be it chess, or darts, or billiards. He was the one who appreciated the genuine joy on his expression when he sipped at his coffee at Leblanc, in the rare vulnerable moments where he felt unwatched enough to drop his guard. He was the one who listened to his quiet voice amongst the jazz music at the club in Kichijoji, not saying a word as Akechi let slip little pieces of his true self into their conversation. He was the one who knew Akechi the best, and nobody would convince him otherwise. 

That was the reason why Akira had difficulty believing Akechi’s flamboyant metaverse getup, if only because he knew that Akechi’s true heart wasn’t that loud. In fact, there was always something sorrowful about him, in the calm moments they spent in one another’s company, and something angry in the way he’d lost their battle of hearts in the Metaverse. There was something passionate in the way he’d thrown his glove, issuing the challenge that would seal their promise. 

There was more to Goro Akechi than the man he showed himself to be, and more to him than the murderer they’d discovered he’d be. 

Perhaps it was that thought that drove Akira to investigate more, taking on the role of a detective in the search for truth about his rival- his friend. 

As such, one night, when he and Akechi left Jazz Jin side-by-side after an evening of pleasant conversation over live music, Akira realized something; that Akechi was much too complex, wrapped up in hidden truths and lies. Even their heart-to-hearts were only the tip of the iceberg. 

“Thank you for the pleasant evening,” Goro thanked him as they strolled towards the subway station, huddled in his scarf to fight back the chill of the November air. “I know we have a job to do, but it is always so interesting to hear what you have to say.”

“The time off did us both good,” Akira shrugged. “Let’s do this again sometime.”

“Not too soon, I hope.” Goro gave him one of his pleasant, fake smiles. “Too much of one thing would make the novelty wear off.”

Akira offhandedly caught himself thinking that he wouldn’t mind spending too much time with Goro. 

“Well, I’ll be off. Don’t stay out too long, Kurusu,” Akechi continued, leaving Akira at the mouth of the subway entrance. 

“Good night,” Akira wished him, watching as he threw him another fake smile and waved, descending the stairs into the subway. 

Left by himself, Akira just watched him go, until the tip of his long brown hair disappeared through the subway doors. Around him, the night crowd of Kichijoji went by, ignoring the young man planted frozen in the midst of it, thinking. 

Finally, a thought occurred to Akira, and he pulled his phone out of his pocket. His mind’s eye replayed the softness of Goro’s face as he quietly sipped his cocktail at Jazz Jin, only to give him his TV smile on the way out. He tapped the Metaverse Navigator, and the words that left him didn’t even feel like his own. 

“Goro Akechi, Detective Prince.”

Part of him knew exactly what to expect.

“Candidate found.”

It didn’t come as a surprise, but it still hit Akira like a punch to the gut. He remembered Akechi’s gentle moments, his passion, his flashes of vulnerability, and the realization knocked the breath right out of his lungs. 

His hands began to shake and he leaned against a lamppost nearby to support himself should his knees buckle. His head spun as if he’d drank something strong, making him nauseous and light-headed all of a sudden. He slipped his phone into his pocket and then buried his face in his hands, breathing shakily to try and regain strength in his limbs. 

In. Out. 

Goro Akechi had a Palace.

“You okay, kid?” 

Shakily, Akira raised his head to see a policeman walking his bike, frowning in concern at the sight of him hunched over. In the yellow lamp light, Akira must have looked sickly pale. 

“Yeah, fine,” he answered, trying to right himself on his noodly legs. 

“You look sick. Do you need any help?” the policeman pressed, glancing over him for signs of injury. 

“No, I just-” The words caught in Akira’s throat and he cleared it to continue. “I just… got some bad news. I’d better head home.”

The policeman wished him a safe trip, but Akira barely acknowledged him, turning around and descending the steps. He swayed a bit in his walk but thankfully made it into the subway car without incident. The car was mostly empty at this late hour, so he sat down, leaning his head in his hands to regain his bearings once more. By the time he reached Shibuya, his thoughts felt a little clearer, so he completed his return home with only lingering dread. 

Morgana greeted him when he climbed the stairs to his room, curled up on the windowsill to enjoy the fresh nighttime breeze, 

“Welcome back,” he said, opening one of his eyes lazily before seeing the pale look on Akira’s face and standing up. “Whoa. Rough night with Akechi?”

“Very funny,” Akira groaned, dropping his bag and beginning to undress. 

“You know, I still don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be spending so much one-on-one time with him.” Morgana curled up again to give him a bit of privacy as he got changed. “We don’t know what’s going through his head, after all.” 

Akira silently acknowledged that as a fact. For him to have a Palace, there really must have been an entire facet of his being that they weren’t seeing. 

“Fine,” Morgana continued when it was clear that Akira had no intention of debating with him. “Just be careful. We’ll be securing our route in Niijama’s Palace soon, which means that he’ll probably act soon. We have to be ready for anything.”

“I know, Morgana,” Akira sighed, pulling on his night clothes before heading to the bed. He dropped into it tiredly, immediately joined by his friend/pet/supernatural companion. “Don’t worry. I’ve got my eye on him.”

“If you say so.” That seemed to be the end of the conversation as Morgana made himself comfortable, and promptly fell asleep against Akira’s side. 

Sleep, however, eluded Akira for a while longer, and he was left staring at the ceiling, wondering if he’d made the right choice. It was one thing to know that someone had malevolent intentions, but it was another thing to pry into the innermost parts of their hearts. Somehow, Akira just couldn’t place Akechi alongside deplorable villains like Kamoshida or Kaneshiro. 

The thought occurred to him that Futaba had also twisted her heart into a Palace, for very different reasons than the other people they’d encountered along the way. 

And now, that particular thought made Akira’s stomach twist in knots, because if Goro’s heart was distorted by circumstance, rather than by choice… then they were forsaking another victim of this cruel world in order to uphold their own justice. 

\--- III ---

Akira called his team together the very next day after school in order to complete their infiltration into Sae Niijima’s Palace. He kept a careful eye on Akechi, more so than usual, although it was hard to believe that the young man was planning on betraying them when he came up with ingenious strategies such as using two cards to secure their victory. If Akira looked a little awestruck at his explanation before the scale bridge, Akechi didn’t mention it. 

With their infiltration route secure, they retreated, meeting up again in the real world once they all re-appeared in the alley across from the police station.

“Now we can send the calling card!” Ann enthusiastically cheered, exhausted, but glad it was over. Akira, too, felt the exhaustion in his bones, but his wariness did not suffer for it. As long as Goro was still around, he couldn’t let his guard down for any reason. 

“Actually, I suggest we wait until the last possible moment to send the calling card,” Akechi countered, going off about a convoluted explanation about putting pressure on Sae Niijima even though Akira knew that the entire group guessed it was a lie. It was likely just a ploy to stall their re-entry into the Metaverse until Akechi and the ones backing him could arrange their manpower and resources. They let him talk, though, and ultimately agreed. 

“Well, I suppose we should lay low for now,” Yusuke mused out loud. “Niijima intends to release the warrant on the 20th of November, correct? That would leave us with twelve days to prepare.”

“Ten, if you consider that we need to send the calling card on the 18th and make the heist on the 19th, according to Akechi,” Makoto corrected, smoothing her skirt down. “Am I right?”

“Certainly.” Akechi’s smile was fake, although there was a hint of tiredness to it. Akira was strangely relieved to see such human behavior in him. “Well, shall we break for now? We should all rest and prepare, as this is going to be our biggest, and very last heist.” 

“Right,” Akira agreed, suddenly thinking of something that would require them all to break first. “Good work, everyone. Let’s lay low until the 18th.”

As his team began to leave, Akira threw Akechi a curious look, noting how he, too, seemed sluggish and weighed down. Whether it was simply residual from today’s infiltration, or something weighing on his mind, he seemed distant and tired. 

“Get some rest, Akechi,” he couldn’t help but say, delighted to see a look of genuine surprise flash across his face for a second before the fake smile slid back into place. 

“I should ask that you don’t baby me,” he chuckled, grabbing his briefcase. “I am more than capable of taking care of myself.”

And Akira remembered him admitting he lived alone, saying he couldn’t cook and didn’t eat much at all, remembered how tired he looked over his coffee sometimes, burdened by sleepless nights at work and long days at school, recalled him saying, once in confidence, that he felt older than his eighteen year.

“I know,” he replied, and couldn’t even believe himself.

Once they all split up, Akira sticking with Morgana and Futaba on the train home, he waited to be inside the subway car before texting the group chat they had without Akechi. 

**Akira** : Meet at Leblanc in thirty minutes.

 **Akira** : Without Akechi.

 **Akira** : I have something to show you all.

Hoping he wasn’t making a mistake, Akira ignored Morgana’s curious prying and turned his eyes to the lights flashing by in the subway tunnel as they traveled home. There was always the underlying fear of Akechi finding out what they were up to, but somehow, the exhausted look in his eyes today reassured Akira that he’d be heading straight home without any more questions asked. 

Eventually, the Phantom Thieves filed into the attic, in various states of wakefulness. A few of them looked ready to crash, and Futaba was actually napping by the time they all made it, making Akira feel a little guilty for not putting this off to tomorrow. Still, it was something he had to get off his chest, and his friends had always insisted they remain truthful with one another. 

“Why’d you call us?” Ryuji finally asked, yawning so loudly that Futaba stirred, just to smack him. 

“I’m sorry, I know everybody’s tired, but it was something I wanted to say now before I lost it,” Akira explained softly, letting the Thieves make themselves as comfortable as possible in his bare-bones attic room. 

“Alright then. It sounds important, so we’ll listen,” Makoto started them off once everyone was seated and awake, crossing her arms. 

“Did something happen with Akechi?” Haru asked, brow furrowed worriedly. 

“Not exactly…” Fishing his phone out of his pocket, Akira turned it on. “It’ll be easier to show you.”

The Thieves were silent while he fiddled with the Meta-Nav, watching as he brought it to his face to speak his keywords. 

“Goro Akechi, Detective Prince.”

“Candidate found.”

Just like the first time he’d tried, Akira felt a cold sweat breaking out on the back of his neck. Akechi had thrown him such a tired look before leaving earlier, burdened by so much more than what their eyes could see. 

Goro Akechi had a Palace. 

“Man, for real!?” Ryuji cried out, looking shocked although it felt like this was all too predictable. Perhaps the initial shock had bled out of Akira now, leaving only worry in its wake. 

“Akechi has a Palace?” Ann reiterated, just to be sure they were all on the same page. “That’s… that’s crazy!”

“That shouldn’t even be possible!” Morgana interrupted, glancing at Akira’s phone hotly as if the confirmation message displayed on it would change. “Akechi is a Persona user, and it’s impossible for Persona users to have Palaces!”

“What is the authority on which you share that information?” Yusuke mused out loud, looking troubled. “Could it be that… it was only speculation, and we were wrong all along in our beliefs?”

“Are you calling me a liar?” Morgana hissed, ears flattening, although he yowled in surprise when he was interrupted by suddenly being swept into a sleepy Futaba’s arms. 

“Who cares who was right or wrong,” she yawned, cuddling into Morgana’s scruff at the expense of her furry friend. “We’re Phantom Thieves- we see a Palace, and we destroy it. Easy-peasy, right?”

“Although it could be strategic on our end to change Akechi’s heart, is it truly wise to play with such a variable so close to our deadline…?” Makoto hummed in thought, picking at her fingernails. “It could be a boon if we could call off his operation before it even began, although we’d have to contend with whoever is pulling the strings behind him…” 

A silence fell across them as they all contemplated the information laid out before them, and Akira was glad that they took it seriously. He was also glad that they treated it like the complex issue it was instead of a black-or-white decision to be made, although a part of him recognized that it wasn’t complex for them in the way it felt complex to him. 

After all, Goro Akechi’s more human nature had been reserved for his presence only so far. 

“Well, it’s no use thinking about it now,” Haru finally snapped them out of their collective musing, getting up from her seat. “We’re all exhausted, and this isn’t something we should be deciding without all of our heads in the right place. How about we rest for today and talk about this another time?”

“That would be wise,” Makoto conceded, letting out a sigh. “I don’t think I could come up with anything right now even if I tried.”

“Let us head home, then, and reconvene when we are rested,” Yusuke agreed, drawing a few murmurs of assent from those around him. 

“Right.” For the second time that night, Akira dismissed them, quietly apologizing for keeping them so long and only locking the door to Leblanc when the last of them was out of sight down the alley. Alone with his thoughts while Morgana accompanied Futaba home, he crashed into his bed, and stared at the ceiling once again. 

He wondered what Akechi’s Palace would look like, what the state of his heart would be. Would it be something opulent like Madarame’s, or something humble like Futaba’s? Would it be realistic like Kaneshiro’s, or otherworldly like Okumura’s? Would they encounter puzzles, or Shadows, or barriers on their way towards his Treasure? What would his Treasure even be?

What malevolence could have twisted the desires of an 18 year-old boy so badly that his distortions had materialized? 

It worried Akira to the bone when he recalled how quiet Akechi would sometimes become, how distant his gaze would turn when he thought no one was watching. Beyond their business as detective and thief, killer and target, beyond their established rivalry, Akira wanted to believe they were friends. 

And Akira was nothing if not loyal to his friends. All of them. 

\--- IV ---

With a very brief time limit held over their heads, there was no choice but to reconvene the next day, even though all of them were still recovering from Sae’s Palace. Akira could see it in the sluggishness of his team’s bodies, and although he felt apologetic for dragging them into it, the prospect of uncovering Akechi’s secrets was a bit too pressing to pass up on. 

“Alright, let’s go over what we’ve got,” Makoto began as they all sat around the table in Akira’s attic, snacks open before them to keep their hands occupied. “First of all, we’re sure that this Palace belongs to the Akechi we know, right?”

“The Meta-Nav reacts when we specify that he’s the Detective Prince, so I suppose that answers that question,” Haru replied, breaking off a piece of dried squid for Morgana to chew on. 

“Should we try and find his keywords, then?” Ryuji asked hopefully, always up for the challenge. 

“Maybe we should decide whether or not we’ll be pursuing his Palace in the first place,” Ann winced at Ryuji’s enthusiasm, picking at her nails nervously. “I know Akechi doesn’t have the best intentions, but does that give us the right to infiltrate his heart?”

“’Not the best intentions’ she says,” Ryuji huffed, throwing her a dirty look. “The guy’s planning to kill our leader in a week! There’s no reason we shouldn’t stop him!”

“We’ve already designed a plan to fake our leader’s death and fool Akechi,” Yusuke argued softly, as if unsure of his own words. “Is it worth discarding that plan in favour of stealing our enemy’s Treasure instead?”

“As much as I hate to admit it, our plan’s got more holes in it than Swiss cheese,” Futaba grumbled, busying herself with her instant yakisoba. Ryuji gave her a pleading look, to which she responded with a harsh glare, slurping her noodles pettily. “Sho if we can keeb it like a-” she interrupted herself to swallow loudly, “like a Plan B, or something, that would be good. Besides! If he’s got a Palace, then he’s 100% guilty, right?”

“You had a Palace, too, Futaba,” Makoto reminded her quietly, wincing when the bright look on their youngest teammate’s face fell. “I mean… Knowing what we know about Akechi, I doubt he’s at all like you, but he just… doesn’t seem like all the other Palace rulers we’ve confronted so far.” 

“Right?” Riding Makoto’s momentum, Ann piped up with another counter-argument. “It just… doesn’t seem right. Akechi is a high school student, how could he possibly be so distorted already?”

“Well, let’s presume that it is the case,” Haru mediated before anyone could retort. “Let’s make the assumption that Akechi’s Palace exists not because of outside distortions, but because of a distorted sense of self. Shouldn’t we save him from it?”

“He wouldn’t want to be saved,” Akira mumbled, although nobody seemed to hear it. It felt too personal of a comment to make out loud, anyway. Morgana watched him curiously as he elected not to repeat. 

“Doesn’t it feel like we’re prying into his private life too much if we do?” Ann bit her lip, unsure. “I mean, yeah, I’d wanna save him too, but it’s not like when Futaba asked for us to steal her heart. Akechi doesn’t even know we’re talking about him right now, so it feels a little wrong to be doing something like this behind his back…”

“I agree that it seems slightly underhanded to be doing this in secret, but Akechi is a real threat to us right now,” Yusuke said, munching rapidly on snacks since he likely didn’t have money for any actual dinner later. “At the very least, we could ascertain what his distortion is before deciding to pursue it or not.”

“What do you think, Mona?” Haru asked, turning to the cat, who had been silently watching the emotions flicker across Akira’s blank gaze all this time. “You didn’t say much about this so far.”

“I’ll go with what Akira decides,” Morgana simply said, ears lowered as he watched Akira’s inner conflict. “It’s true that Akechi is without a doubt our enemy, but he’s also just a kid. Plus, he’s a Persona user, so I don’t know what to expect from his Palace. His control on his own cognition must be way more refined than all the other Palace rulers we’ve fought so far…”

“Well, what do you think, then, Akira?” Ryuji asked, and suddenly, Akira found himself to be the object of attention of seven pairs of eyes. “Should we look into Akechi’s Palace or not?”

“It wouldn’t hurt to at least investigate,” Akira decided, because he truly was concerned about what Akechi’s Palace could be. “We should at least give it a look.”

“Do you think Akechi knows he has a Palace?” Futaba mused out loud. “Maybe he’s been in there, too.”

“I doubt that the owner of a Palace can enter their own Palace for very long,” Morgana tried to explain. “Maybe him being a Persona user would extend how long he could exist in his own distorted cognition, but at some point, his perception would become simply too chaotic, and his Palace would collapse. If he’s already visited his own Palace, it likely wasn’t for more than a few hours.”

“But again, that is merely conjecture, is it not?” Makoto asked, watching Morgana’s little face twist into annoyance. 

“Yeah, yeah… if anyone has any better theories…”

“I’m sure that’s not far from the truth, Mona,” Haru reassured him, then turned to Akira. “So. We’ll search for his keywords?” 

“Let’s do it!” Ryuji cheered, pulling out his phone. “Alright, where should we start? Where is his distortion, d’you think?”

“How about his school?” Ann asked.

“Candidate not found.”

“His apartment?” Makoto asked next. 

“Candidate not found.”

“How about the TV station where we met?” Morgana tried.

“Candidate not found.”

“Let’s think a little bigger. Akechi is a public figure, after all,” Haru encouraged them.

“What, big like the entirety of Japan?” Ryuji joked. 

“Candidate not found.”

“Maybe not that big,” Futaba huffed. “How about just… Tokyo?”

“Candidate not found.”

“Man, the Meta-Nav has _got_ to be pissed with us by now,” Ryuji grumbled, drawing a snort from Akira. “How much bigger should we try?”

“What about the internet?” Yusuke attempted. “He is a celebrity, after all.”

“Candidate not found.”

“At this rate, his distortion’s gonna be the size of the entire world,” Morgana sighed, letting out a yowl of surprise when the Meta-Nav reacted. 

“Candidate found.”

“No way!” Futaba exclaimed, expressing their collective shock. Even Akira’s eyebrows had raised slightly, surprised that Akechi’s distortion was so extensive. 

“Who the hell even has a distortion that big!?” Ryuji crowed, eyes wide as he looked at his phone for confirmation. As expected, the new keywords were there, right next to Akechi’s name. Only a blank spot remained as to the nature of his distortion. 

“Quiet down up there!” Sojiro suddenly yelled from the foot of the stairs. “The café’s still open, you know!”

“Not that he has any customers,” Futaba huffed just as Ann called down a hasty apology. 

Sojiro’s interruption seemed to have taken the edge of emotion off of them, though, so that when they all turned their eyes back to the phone, they felt focused again. 

“So. What about his distortion?” Morgana asked again to get them thinking. “What does Goro Akechi perceive the world to be?”

“Dude’s so fake all the time, we wouldn’t even find out from talking to him,” Ryuji sighed, leaning back into the ratty sofa. “He’d probably give us a bullshit answer like a maze, or something.”

“Candidate not found.”

“Yeah yeah, I know.”

“Akira, you spend a lot of time with him, don’t you?” Makoto pointed out, although she didn’t sound like she approved very much. “You’re probably the best placed to make a guess.”

“Goro doesn’t talk about himself that much,” Akira shrugged, at a loss just like them. He noticed, though, that suddenly everyone had fallen quiet, and were looking at him in various states of confusion. “What?”

“Nothing, Akira,” Haru replied a little too quickly, and perhaps a little too sweetly. “So you’re saying you also have no idea?”

“I could try to find out,” Akira suggested. “We might be short on time before the heist, but I can see if he’s free tonight.”

“You know we don’t like you spending more time than necessary with him…” Makoto sighed, although Akira’s impassive expression spoke volumes about how he didn’t particularly respect that sentiment. “But fine… if you think you can get it out of him…” 

“I’ll text him now,” Akira decided, hand on his phone before the others could retract their blessing. “You guys should head home and try to guess on your end, too.” 

“I’ll scroll through some of his interviews, too, see if he’s said anything that could clue us in,” Futaba volunteered. 

“Right!” Ann cheered, pumping her fist. “And I’ve got a few magazines lying around with his feature in it. I’ll also flip through ‘em for something!”

“Guess the rest of us will just have to go with our gut…” Makoto sighed, getting up. “Alright, Akira. We’ll leave Akechi to you.”

“Please stay safe!” Haru wished him, as if Akira was heading into a gunfight with Akechi rather than an evening at the jazz lounge. 

His friends would probably blow a fuse if they knew what Akechi and he had been up to in Mementos just a few days ago. The glove was still in his pocket, heavy. 

Sojiro gruffly waved them all off as they left the café, not a single customer in the booths as Futaba had predicted. Once they were all gone, Sojiro turned to Akira, giving him a scrutiny from head to toe. 

“Well, if that was all, then you can spend some time doing the dishes for me, can’t you?”

“I was going to go out for the evening,” Akira said softly, although Akechi still hadn’t responded to his text. 

“What, with a girl?” The sheer shock on Sojiro’s face was almost insulting, if Akira wasn’t busy feeling his heart crawl up his throat. 

“No, no. Just with a friend.”

“Then it’s fine. You can go after giving me a hand here.”

“Fine.” There really was no arguing with Sojiro, not that Akira particularly minded. Goro still hadn’t texted back, anyway. 

It was in the middle of scrubbing curry stains out of yesterday’s pot that Akira felt his pocket vibrate, his heart jumping in his chest at the feeling of it. He snapped his gloves off for a second to check, and indeed, Akechi had texted back. 

**Goro** : Unfortunately, I must decline. 

**Goro** : I was intending to catch up on my work tonight. 

**Goro** : Our recent… activities have left me with little time to work.

Akira clicked his tongue, realizing too late that the disappointment he felt went beyond that of a failing scheme. He typed up a response before he could think too hard about it. 

**Akira** : Come work at Leblanc.

 **Akira** : I’m watching the store tonight anyway. 

He watched as the little dots appeared at the bottom of his screen, indicating that Akechi was typing, although it took quite a while before he actually received an answer. At this point, Akira could feel the weight of Sojiro’s stare on his back. 

**Goro** : Well, I’d appreciate some coffee to keep me focused. 

**Goro** : The company wouldn’t be unpleasant, either, I suppose. 

Akira couldn’t help the light smile that twitched on his lips. His fingers flew over the keyboard before Akechi had the opportunity to rescind his statement. 

**Akira:** Good. Come any time you want.

 **Akira** : Hope you’re hungry. 

**Akira** : The curry will be done by the time you get here.

 **Goro** : Thank you.

 **Goro:** I’ll see you later.

Satisfied, Akira slipped his phone into his pocket and threw his gloves back on before Sojiro could say anything. He was elbows deep in the pot again when his guardian walked up to him, crossing his arms. 

“So… was that your… friend?”

“Yeah,” Akira nodded, eyes on the particularly stubborn stain near the lip of the pot. “It’s Akechi. You’ve met him before a few times.”

“Oh, yeah, that detective boy.” Sojiro nodded knowingly. “You don’t see many kids these days with a palate that refined. He’s always welcome here.”

“Thanks,” Akira simply said, swallowing past the ball in his throat when he remembered that it would all be over between them in a week, for better or for worse. He scrubbed a little harder. “I’ll let him know.”

\--- V ---

Akechi arrived in the evening, holding the door for the elderly couple that left at the same time to uphold his polite façade. Sometimes, it was hard to tell with him if he was being genuine or not in his little everyday mannerisms. It was the mystery of his existence that perhaps made him so alluring. 

“Good evening,” the young man greeted as he closed the door behind him, bowing his head lightly to Sojiro when he neared the counter. “My apologies for intruding. I hope that someone warned you of my arrival?”

“Intruding? Warned me?” Sojiro scoffed, a fond smile stretching across his face. Akira couldn’t see it from his spot at the stove in the nook, but he heard it in his voice. “This is a business, kid, and you’re a customer. Quit acting like you’re bothering me.”

At the very least, Akira peeked his head out just in time to see surprise on Akechi’s face before it dissolved into a smile. It was tired on the edges. 

“Well then, thank you.” Taking a seat on the highchairs, in his usual spot, he dropped his briefcase on the counter with a light thump. “I’ll have my usual please.”

“Coming right up,” Sojiro smiled at him again, then turned to Akira. “Hey, you have a customer.”

“I’m busy with the curry…” Akira pouted, although it didn’t quite amuse Sojiro. 

“The curry shouldn’t be stirred so often anyway,” he waved him off, circling the counter to leave. “You’ll break the potatoes if you keep going.”

“Alright.” Giving the curry one last stir out of spite, Akira dropped his ladle, and finally approached the counter. “Hey.”

“Hello,” Akechi greeted him, already busy with retrieving his laptop from his briefcase. “I look forward to your masterful coffee, Kurusu.” 

“Don’t forget to clean up before you lock up,” Sojiro reminded him idly, already heading for the door. “You can close early, too, if you want. Not like anyone will show up at this hour.”

“Just me,” Akechi chuckled like a private joke. 

“Just you,” Akira repeated, mostly out of automatism, already grabbing Akechi’s favourite coffee beans off the shelf. Sojiro left with a jingle of the chime, and then, the two of them were alone. 

For a while, it was silent while Akechi set up his workstation, Akira diligently focusing on his drink. The bubbling of curry on the stove filled the silence, alongside the low drone of the television news in the background. Akechi’s quick fingers typing on his laptop soon joined the orchestra of sounds that made Leblanc seem like a bubble isolated from the world, only for Akechi and Akira to enjoy together. 

Not long thereafter, Akira slid Akechi’s coffee to him, and then shuffled over to the curry to turn off the heat before heading to the front to flip the sign. Akechi watched the sequence of actions from the corner of his eye, so that when Akira returned from closing the café, their gazes met. 

“Are you sure you should be closing this early?” Akechi asked idly, taking the opportunity to grab his cup and swirl the coffee around to enjoy the aroma. “It can’t be good for Sakura’s business.”

“He said I could close early, but didn’t say how early,” Akira argued amusedly, circling the counter again to check on the curry. “It’s his fault, if anything.”

“How unforgiving of your benefactor,” Akechi chuckled, taking a sip and letting out a pleased noise. “And after he taught you to make such delicious coffee.”

“It’s all me,” Akira joked, watching fondly as Akechi threw him another tired smile and returned to his work. Akira prepared a plate of rice and fresh curry for him and slid it towards him on the counter, but didn’t say anything when Akechi failed to look towards it. There was a crease in his brow as he read something on his screen, occasionally typing a few letters here and there. It looked like serious work, and Akira couldn’t begrudge him the silence. 

Instead, he busied himself with cleaning up. He first did the dishes, listening to the occasional clink of Akechi’s spoon on his plate, and humming a random tune under his breath to pass the time. Then, he wiped the counter, slowly inching his way towards Akechi, who still seemed absorbed by his laptop. His heart warmed when he noted that his plate of curry was completely empty, every last grain of rice eaten, and he reached over to take it back. 

“Thank you for the food,” Akechi said softly, glancing away from his screen and up at Akira. “I don’t have many opportunities to eat home-cooked meals, so this really was a treat for me today.”

“Anytime,” Akira said, and caught himself meaning it. Akechi began to turn his attention back to his work, though, and Akira panicked slightly at having lost his opportunity at a conversation. “So. Anything interesting happening these days?”

“Not particularly.” Akechi fell into the conversation easily, seemingly also wanting a break. “The Phantom Thieves dossier is on hold until Niijima can produce a warrant, and all the other open cases are lackluster in comparison.”

“Kinda makes you feel like this is the calm before the storm,” Akira hummed off-handedly, watching Akechi’s eyebrows furrow slightly. “I hope this blows over so we can go back to our normal lives.”

“I hope so, too,” Akechi said, a tad too flatly to be absolutely convincing, and again began to turn towards the screen. Akira scrambled for another in for a conversation. 

“Anything interesting happening in the world, then?” he asked, leaning casually against the counter and glancing over at the TV. “We don’t hear much on the news.”

“I don’t keep up with international news, either,” Akechi admitted, sipping the last of his coffee before placing the cup down into the saucer with a quiet clink. “I’ve got enough to contend with here in Japan, after all.”

“It doesn’t make you curious?” Akira pushed slightly, gauging his friend’s reaction. “What the world is like out there?”

“I’m sure it’s not too different from what it’s like out here,” Akechi chuckled. “Every country has problems with money, their government, corruption, organized crime… it’s really all the same.”

“I agree, but I also think there’s much that we don’t know out there.” Aware that he was perhaps speaking a bit too much compared to his usual quiet demeanor, Akira tried to keep it brief. “To me, the world is like an ocean. It looks uniform at first glance but there are undercurrents and underwater landscapes that make every inch of it different. Some parts of it are well known, and some continuously surprise us. The beings that inhabit it are really all just the same, but there is still a hierarchy of predator and prey, just like people in power in societies.”

He halted his monologue to note that Akechi was now watching him with barely concealed interest and perhaps a little suspicion in his eyes. His fingers drummed calmly on the countertop, betraying how antsy he felt. 

Not good. 

“Plus, isn’t there an English idiom that says it?” Akira tried to joke to make the atmosphere lighter. “There’s plenty of fish in the sea, or something like that?”

“Well…” Akechi regarded him for another few moments, and then sighed to release the tension in his body. His fingers stopped and disappeared below the counter. “I suppose so. It’s a good enough metaphor.”

“Got anything better?” Akira challenged, hoping that Akechi couldn’t hear the heavy beating of his heart under stress. 

“For what? The worldly allegory?” Akechi chuckled, apparently oblivious to his anxiety. Akira silently patted himself on the back for having a resting blank face. “I’ve never thought of it myself, but there was a saying in literature that encompassed my feelings quite well.”

“Oh?” Akira’s ears were wide open. He tried not to make it obvious that he was hanging onto Akechi’s every word. 

“ _All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players_ ,” the older boy quoted in English, and Akira felt his face drain of colour. 

He knew he should’ve listened more in Ms. Chouno’s class. 

“It’s a quote from an English play from the 17th century,” Akechi elaborated, looking perhaps a bit too smug. 

“William Shakespeare?” Akira guessed, because it was honestly the only author he could remember from that time period. They’d studied literature at the beginning of the trimester- he couldn’t be bothered to remember now.

“Correct.” At the very least, Akechi seemed fooled by his pretend-knowledge. “From his play titled ‘As You Like It’.”

“And what does it mean?” Akira pushed his luck, hoping for a line. 

But of course, Akechi dodged with grace. 

“I suppose that’s up to interpretation, now isn’t it, Kurusu?” he teased, and then returned his eyes to his screen. Before Akira could say anything, he was back to typing up a storm. 

Recognizing that he would be getting nothing more from him tonight, he retreated to the kitchen alcove to count his losses while Akechi wrapped himself up in his own bubble once again. 

“Thank you once again for your invitation,” he later said as he packed up to leave, the moon already hanging in the sky by the time he went for the door. 

“Anytime,” Akira nodded to him, watching him go, and glancing out the door to watch him amble down the street towards the train station. 

When Akechi thought he wasn’t being watched anymore, his shoulders visibly slumped inward, as if he was caving in underneath the crush of his own gravity. 

In the moonlight, something fierce ached in Akira’s chest.

\--- VI ---

The Phantom Thieves met up once again the next day after school, something electric and exciting running amongst them as they gathered in the attic as usual. When Yusuke, the last of them, stepped into the room, conversation had already started, ranging from schoolwork to weekend plans to recent TV shows. 

Akira was in the midst of it, a calm smile on his face that betrayed his distance from the energetic mood around him. Once Yusuke arrived, he looked up to greet him with a nod of his head, and then turned to the rest of the group. 

“Oh, are we all here?” Makoto said, catching onto their leader’s body language. At the sound of her voice, all tangential conversation died down, and the Thieves all turned to face the table. “Then let’s begin the meeting.”

“So first things first, all my guesses last night were a bust,” Ryuji sighed dramatically. 

“Mine too,” Ann added. “I guess it’s a little tricky to guess the thoughts of someone who never really shows his true self around others, huh?”

“You did meet with Akechi last night as planned, correct?” Yusuke asked, eyes wide in curiosity. “Tell us- did he say anything incriminating?”

“I tried to get it out of him, but he wouldn’t elaborate,” Akira admitted, biting his lip. “There was one thing he said that could be a lead, but it was in English.”

“Oh, what was it? Maybe I can help.” Ann perked up visibly at the prospect of being helpful. 

“I don’t remember,” Akira shrugged, but continued. “It was a line from some Shakespeare play. ‘As You Like It’, or something like that.”

“Good thing we’ve got Control F these days, then, huh?” Futaba cackled from where she was seated on Akira’s bed, immediately pulling her laptop out from her bag. 

“Control… F?” Yusuke frowned, looking mildly concerned. “What is…?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Makoto sighed before Yusuke could unwittingly drag himself into an argument with their navigator. “Let her take care of it.”

“Do you happen to remember any parts of it?” Haru pressed while Futaba tapped away at her computer. 

“Not really. I remember him saying the word _‘world’_ , so I’d guess it’s a clue… But who knows,” Akira explained. 

“Well, we’ll just have to look at the full text and find whatever passage mentions that word,” Futaba chuckled, her screen reflecting lightly on her huge glasses. “Easy-peasy… here we go!”

She tapped a key, then turned her laptop so that they could all see the screen scrolling rapidly. 

“Thirty mentions of that word,” Ryuji groaned when the search concluded. “This is gonna take forever!”

“No it won’t,” Ann rolled her eyes, unimpressed. “Hand it to me, I’ll skim it and tell you what strikes my eye.”

“Let’s open the Meta-Nav, just in case we get a hit,” Morgana suggested, nudging Akira lightly until he took the hint to pull out his phone and activate the app. 

“Here’s one,” Ann hummed in thought. “Did Akechi say the quote ‘ _And all the world was of my father’s mind?_ ”

“That’s not it,” Akira shook his head. 

“At any rate, we wouldn’t know of his father,” Makoto agreed. “He’s an orphan, from what I hear.”

Aira nodded, swallowing dryly. 

“How about ‘ _Cleanse the foul body of the infected world_ ’?” Ann asked, stumbling over a few words. 

“Wow,” Morgana gasped. “Lady Ann, you really are a genius… That’s such a tough sentence to say!”

“I can’t even begin to guess what that means,” Ryuji sighed, patting the cat’s head to get him to stop gawking. “Man… I really should’ve listened better in class.”

“That’s not it either,” Akira shook his head, trying to recall other parts of Akechi’s quote to help them along. Next to him, Ryuji started a minor argument with Morgana, as usual. “I remember… Something about men or women being part of the quote, too.”

“Then…” Ann scrolled down the page a little longer, tapping a key in self-satisfaction when she found her next hit. “How about this one? ‘ _All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players’_?”

“That’s the one!” Akira’s eyebrows rose in surprise, as he hadn’t actually expected them to find the quote again. “He said that to me when I asked him what he thought of the world.”

“Alright!” Ryuji cheered, dropping Morgana from where he was hanging the cat by the scruff to avoid getting clawed. “We got it!”

“I can begin to guess some parts of it,” Haru hummed in thought, reading the words on the screen carefully. “Maybe Ann can explain it a little bit better, though?”

“I’ll… do my best,” Ann winced at the weight of expectation, glancing at the sentence again. “It… it compares the world to a stage, like the one at the school assemblies, and says that all people- _men and women_ \- are… participants?” She frowned at the last word. “Something about the people… playing a game, or something?”

“Sounds straightforward to me.” Without further ado, Ryuji swiped Akira’s phone off the table, and tapped the Meta-Nav microphone. “Goro Akechi, the world, a stage!”

“Candidate not found.”

“Are you serious!?” Futaba groaned out loud, dropping back into the bed with her arms splayed out. 

“I imagined it wouldn’t be so easy…” Yusuke muttered under his breath, solemnly looking at the error message on the screen. 

“Well I’m fresh out of ideas,” Ryuji sighed, slumping back into his seat in defeat. “Hey, you sure that was the quote you heard?”

“I’m sure.” Akira always remembered what Akechi said to him, if only because his honesty was so rare. His eyes remained on the phone, watching the black and red background of the navigation app dance in wave patterns, taunting him. 

It should be easy. He knew Goro best amongst all of them- he just had to think. 

“Akira…?” Makoto asked softly, noting how he’d gone silent and focused on the phone. “Is… Is something the matter?”

Without replying, Akira stretched across the table to take his phone back, holding it in his hands for a second before tapping the microphone button. 

“Goro Akechi, the world, a theatre.”

“Candidate found, press to begin navigation.”

“Aw yeah, well done, dude!” Ryuji cheered, immediately hushed by Ann, who still seemed traumatized by Sojiro’s scolding from yesterday. 

“Well done, Akira,” Haru clapped her hands in delight. “How did you guess?”

Akira took a moment to remember how Akechi always looked like he was playing a scripted part imposed on him by society, and figured it was obvious in retrospect. Still, he couldn’t just expose his rival like that in front of his friends, even if they were just about to lay all his secrets bare in his own cognitive world. 

For the first time since they started, Akira began to feel a bit uncomfortable with their plan. 

“Lucky guess,” he simply brushed off, ignored at any rate by the excited buzzing of his teammates around him. 

“So?” Morgana prompted, looking pleased. “Should we take a look at Mr. Detective’s heart yet?”

“We could go scout the area even if we elect not to infiltrate today,” Yusuke suggested. “If his distortion encompasses the entire world, then there would be no issue entering the Metaverse from our current location.”

“Then let’s take a quick peek!” Ann agreed, turning to Akira. “On your count, leader!”

With all eyes on him, Akira had no choice but to relent, and stood up from his seat with his phone in hand. 

“Alright. Let’s go.”

“Beginning navigation.”

\--- VII ---

When the ripples of shifting reality settled around them, Akira blinked, and glanced around. To his mild surprise, and that of the others, they were still in Leblanc’s attic. 

“Our clothes!” Haru exclaimed, drawing attention to themselves, and even before he looked, Akira knew to expect the Phantom Thieves to be garbed in their gear. 

“He seriously thinks we’re threats already even though it’s been a second we got here?” Ryuji clicked his tongue, patting down his costume’s pants. 

“It’s likely that Akechi is indiscriminate when it comes to labelling people as threats,” Makoto remarked, pushing a strand of hair out of her masked face. “What an exhausting mentality to have.”

“Makes you wonder why he’s like that…” Futaba mused out loud, her comment twisting something in the pit of Akira’s gut. 

“We should step out of Leblanc and try to situate ourselves in comparison to his distortion,” Morgana suggested, hopping towards the staircase in his bipedal form before waving them on. “Come on!”

Silently, the Thieves filed out of the attic, Akira exiting last. The café downstairs had not changed either, although Akira swore there was something different about it. Perhaps it was the lighting, so much warmer than usual, and the air, light and fresh and pleasant. The aroma of coffee wafted in the air, comforting and homey when combined with the sound of the bubbling pot of curry on the stove. This cognitive Leblanc looked exactly the same as in real life, but somehow seemed more inviting and cozy as Akira walked through it. 

He wondered if this was a conscious doing on Akechi’s part, but exited the café to follow his friends before he could think too hard about it. 

The backstreets of Yongen-Jaya also looked unchanged, although the space around them felt like molasses, proving that they were indeed in the Metaverse once again. 

“Well, now what?” Yusuke asked, glancing around him as if hoping to find a clue. “Nothing seems to have changed.”

“Maybe his distortion is further off, kind of like how we had to drive for a while to get to Oracle’s,” Ann suggested, turning towards the girl in question, who was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the street, fiddling on some holograms that popped up to surround her. “Err… Oracle?”

“Gimme a second, I’m trying to map out the surroundings,” their navigator admonished, tapping furiously at her screens. “I won’t be able to map the whole thing, since, you know, this distortion takes up the entire actual world… but I might be able to map a few kilometers of radius and see if we get any readings.” 

“Good thinking,” Makoto said, crossing her arms to wait. 

“Hey, Joker,” Ryuji called in the meantime, kicking up pebbles on the road. “Think he already knows we’re here?”

“I don’t know.” Akira hoped not.

“I don’t think he has the ability to feel it, at least not until we start messing around with his Treasure,” Morgana explained confidently, and then frowned. “… I think.”

“You think?” Ryuji sighed in exasperation. “Seriously? You don’t actually know anything, do you, you damn cat.”

“I’m not a cat, get that through that thick skull of yours!” Morgana screeched loudly in outrage, drawing a low chuckle from Yusuke. 

“Hehe… skull,” was all he said, hiding his smile behind one of his gloved hands. 

“It… really wasn’t that funny, though…” Ryuji raised his brow, giving up on understanding their more eccentric friend. 

“Alright, got it!” Futaba called out all of a sudden, standing up and dispelling her holograms. “Listen up, Thieves! We’ve got our location!”

“Oh?” Haru prompted her with a curious tilt of her head. 

“I got real strong readings from further off in this world, in that direction,” she pointed in a nondescript direction that gave absolutely no indication to any of them. “I managed to pinpoint a general area even if I didn’t have a map of the Metaverse, but if we superimpose a map of Tokyo with our current location as a center, we can deduce that the readings are coming from the Akasaka Mitsuke area in the real world!”

“Is something specific located there?” Yusuke asked, turning to Makoto for answers. 

“Err… I’m not quite sure…” she admitted sheepishly. 

“Oh, isn’t that where we went on our social studies class trip?” Ann pointed out. “The TV station where we met Akechi for the first time was there, right?”

“That’s right,” Haru confirmed. “There are many broadcasting companies centered there. Father used to have plenty of meetings and interviews in the area at the height of his career.”

“The Meta-Nav rejected the broadcasting station as his keyword, though,” Ryuji said, confused. “How can it be the center of his distortion, then?”

“Think of Oracle’s Palace,” Morgana answered in his usual haughty confidence. “Even though the pyramid- Boss’ house- was the center of her distortion, a large part of the city around her was also distorted into a desert. I guess we could say that the center of the distortion may not always be the distortion itself.”

“Wait… Didn’t you just contradict yourself?” Ryuji squinted suspiciously. 

“Okay, don’t start this again,” Makoto stepped in before they could get into yet another squabble. “Look, if we know that the center of the distortion is in Akasaka Mitsuke, why don’t we return to the real world, travel there, and re-enter in order to save us the trip through the Metaverse?”

“Hmph. I’m glad someone on this team understands,” Morgana grumbled under his breath. 

“Hey, wanna say that again!?”

Akira tapped on the Meta-Nav icon so quickly, they were back to the real world before Morgana could even fight back. 

\--- VIII ---

Futaba’s analysis and Makoto’s prediction turned out correct when they stepped into the Metaverse once again once at the recording studio. Although the TV station itself looked unchanged from where they stood on its doorstep, there was a distinct warp to the air itself that made it clear that they were close to the distortion’s center. 

“Everything looks the same as in real life again…” Ryuji bemoaned, kicking the stone steps of the TV studio entrance idly. 

“Well,” Futaba drawled, pointing her finger to the sky and drawing the team’s attention to it. “I’m pretty sure the floodlights are brand new.”

“Floodlights?” Makoto frowned when she spotted what Futaba spoke of, the massive moving spotlights that reflected against the heavy clouds hanging in the red sky. They seemed to be coming from beyond the TV building. “Come on, let’s investigate.”

Silently taking the lead, Akira waved his team over and waited for them to fall into their usual starting formation in order to move on. He circled the building, followed closely by Ryuji, Ann and Makoto, with the rest of his team covering their rear, and noticed that the closer he got to the distortion, the brighter it got around him. 

Finally, he stepped around the TV building and looked up, and his mouth opened in a tiny gasp of surprise as golden light fell across his eye. 

Akechi’s Palace rose high before them, nestled in a brand new spot in between all the nearby media buildings. It was a theatre alright- its front face a smooth pearly white and asymmetrical in shape to model a modern building that could probably be found in popular performing arts districts like the Americans’ Hollywood. It was huge, likely big enough to contain several auditoriums, the theory confirmed by what looked like several annexes to the main building. The entrance was small in comparison, but the Palace itself grew in size with each rectangular unit placed in a square shape. Beyond the modern building, however, Akira’s eye caught something different- a tall circular structure with a completely different architectural style, something much older and chiseled out of stone, ivory pillars running up and down its sides. It was mostly hidden by the main building, but the moment Akira tried to get a closer look, one of the golden floodlights illuminating the theatre turned and nearly blinded them. 

“How gaudy,” Yusuke sneered, likely getting unwanted memories of Madarame’s similarly bright Palace. “Is this truly the state of his heart?”

“I guess so,” Ryuji groaned, shielding his eyes when one of the smaller spotlights flooded the area with more gold light. “Guy’s so extra all the time, I don’t have trouble believing it.”

“What do you think, Joker?” Haru asked, turning to him for the most informed opinion. 

Not that Akira had anything to say. He was just as floored as they were with the sight of his rival’s Palace. 

“I think the inside of it will give us a better idea,” he settled on saying instead of revealing what he really thought of Akechi’s character. 

“That’s very true,” Makoto acknowledged, turning to look at the Palace again. “So. Shall we go ahead and find our way in?”

“It certainly won’t be through the front,” Morgana remarked pointing out the entrance, where an entire crowd of faceless Metaverse denizens were waiting on the red carpet for their chance to enter the theatre. There was no title displayed on the theatre’s banner to indicate what the shows could be about, leaving Akira completely in the dark as to what awaited them inside. 

“Let’s go around the back,” Akira suggested, already heading forward. “We’re usually lucky with a vent or something similar.”

“Good call!” Ryuji cheered, clapping him on the shoulder as he fell in line, the front-line team taking distance while Futaba got settled inside Necronomicon’s hub in order to guide the rear. 

As they got closer, it became more and more obvious that the crowd was much larger than originally anticipated. The people in Akechi’s cognition seemed drawn to him like moths to an open flame, which made sense considering his popularity as a public figure, although it seemed a little strange to Akira, who knew how much Goro tired from the attention. The Palace so far had been a series of contradictions from what Akira had seen in his friend in the real world, which only left him with conflicted feelings that none of his teammates seemed to share. 

“Over there,” Makoto pointed out once they’d circled the front of the building, pointing at a rusty fire escape that led to a closed door. The ladder had been pulled up, however, which prompted Akira to wave Ryuji over when he stopped at the foot of it. 

“Boost me,” he simply requested, eyeing the bottommost rung of the ladder hanging above their heads. 

“No problem!” Always eager to show off, Ryuji placed his hands for Akira to take a foothold in, and on the count of three, boosted him up. 

It was just enough for Akira to close one hand on the bottom rung, quickly grabbing the ladder with both hands and straining to climb until his feet could find a rung as well. From there, he made it to the landing and unlocked the ladder, letting it fall to the ground. While his teammates climbed up to join him, he busied himself with picking the door lock, securing their entrance into the Palace by the time all of them made it. 

“Let’s go,” he simply ordered, stepping inside Akechi’s distorted heart. 

The hallway that stretched before them was grey cement, likely a service hallway. One of the first doors Akira walked by was a storage room, and the others were all meeting rooms. There didn’t seem to be anything of interest, so he quickly led his team forward to the end of the hallway, where another, nicer looking door indicated that it was a likely way into the main theatre halls. 

Quickly peeking his head out, Akira confirmed the theory, scanning the curtain-lined walls and golden-patterned ceiling, as well as the red carpeted floor. No Shadows came into sight just yet, and Futaba didn’t warn him of any, solidifying the decision to make this their infiltration point. 

“Alright,” he decided, retreating into the service hallway and closing the door to the theatre hall. “That’s good enough for today. Since we’ve established our infiltration point, we should come back tomorrow and make our way through it.”

“Are you sure?” Makoto frowned, analyzing the state of their team. “We’re still in pretty good shape, and we’re on a huge time crunch here. Should we really head back for today?”

“Yes,” Akira nodded, guilt locking up his throat when a flash of disappointment crossed Makoto’s face. “We’re… not ready yet.” He wasn’t ready yet. “We should stock up on supplies and fine-tune our weapons before proceeding. Goro is a Persona user, so his Palace will likely be more challenging than any before it.”

Makoto gave him another unreadable look, probably at something he said, and Akira felt the weight of his teammates’ stares on him once again. In this small, dark hallway, he suddenly felt a little claustrophobic. 

“Well, you heard our leader,” Futaba finally spoke up, breaking the strange tension that was slowly building up over them. “Let’s make like Sonic and escape from the city!”

Akira used the subsequent confusion from Futaba’s pop culture reference to lead them forward, each step away from Goro’s distortion making him feel simultaneously lighter, and guiltier. 

Caroline and Justice were waiting for him at the exit point, the barred door to the Velvet Room still shimmering in its blue light. Akira nodded to the twins subtly, but did not stop. 

“So, you’ll be changing the heart of a fellow Wildcard next, I see,” Justine commented in her soft, airy voice when Akira was close enough to hear her. 

“And a friend, to boot,” Caroline added with a judgmental huff, crossing her arms. Akira swept past them without acknowledging them, even if his heart squeezed at their words. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Inmate.”

Akira hoped so, too.

\--- IX ---

“You have returned to the real world.”

Nobody seemed to notice the group of teenagers that suddenly appeared on the side of a broadcasting company building, although it would draw looks if they continued to hang around. With that in mind, Akira waved them over for a quick debrief before they split. 

“We’ll infiltrate tomorrow,” he informed them in a low voice, Morgana popping his head out of his bag to keep an eye out for curious onlookers. “Get ready and rest well- there will likely be some tough battles ahead of us.”

“You rest as well, Akira,” Haru reminded him kindly, guessing correctly from the look on his face that he didn’t intend on following his own advice. “We’ll need you more than ever tomorrow.”

“Right.” Nodding, Akira stepped back to break the circle. “Let’s break for now, and meet back at the TV station tomorrow after school.”

“Right!” The Phantom Thieves replied in unison, drawing a few looks from passersby, although they had split up much too quickly for anyone to care. 

Akira returned home with Morgana in his bag and Futaba at his side, listening to her talk passionately about last night’s episode of Featherman, and feeling soothed by the sound of her cheery voice. Her idle thoughts did well in distracting him all the way into the subway, where she fell silent in order to browse something on her phone. 

That left Akira’s thoughts to wander helplessly back to Goro, and his hands to wander back to his phone. 

**Akira** : Hey.

 **Akira** : How’s cram school tonight?

 **Akira** : Don’t work too hard.

Akechi didn’t answer, and Akira didn’t text again. 

That night, he was woken by the buzz of his phone, the moon already hanging high in the sky when he blinded himself by glancing at his phone screen with bleary eyes. 

**Goro** : It was alright. 

**Goro** : I’ll be fine.

 **Goro** : Good night, Kurusu.

Akira fell asleep with his phone in his hand, screen still open on Akechi’s conversation and pressed face-down against his chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I started writing this fic, I avoided as much of the Akechi Palace AUs as possible as to prevent myself from being influenced and creating too similar content. The only similarity I'm aware of is with [cosmicpoet's work from 2019](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20805416), which also features Akechi's Palace as a theatre. All other similarities with existing fics are 100% coincidental, and probably because we all love the same things about Mr. Goro :^)
> 
> So this is just the prologue! Act I, if we follow the play script motif I've got going here hehe. Feel free to use the search function (Control+F) to skip between numbered scenes (roman numerals) and pick up where you left off if it becomes too long to read in one sitting. This chapter wasn't too bad, but next chap is like... 20k words haha...
> 
> Chapter 2 is done, and I'm halfway through chapter 3. I'm gonna write a little more for chapter 3 before posting chapter 2, just to keep a reasonable update interval. Please subscribe to this story to get a message when I post the next chapters! It shouldn't be more than a couple of days (: 
> 
> As always, please let me know what you thought! I love having discussions in comments or on social media, so please come talk to me about Goro Akechi and/or Shuake ;; See y'all in a couple of days for Act II!


	2. Act II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The infiltration of the Theatre of Deceit begins, and Akira learns all the heartbreaking truths of Goro Akechi's existence. And, finally meeting the genuine boy behind the mask, Akira also rediscovers part of his own existence as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone, welcome back, and thank you for all your support! I'm so excited for you guys to read this chapter, the meat of Akechi's Palace! It's quite long (22k), so feel free to use the numbered scenes (hehe, play script motif) to skip to and from where you left off. You can use the Ctrl+F function and enter _\--- [roman numeral] ---_ to skip between scenes!
> 
> Fair disclaimer; I don't have experience in the performing arts, and I don't speak Italian whatsoever. Theatre major/Italian readers, please feel free to correct me if some of my terminology is off. All my references come from sources that I've included in the end notes. 
> 
> Shout out to this chapter's MVP, the P5R OST, for playing "Our Light" without fail every single time I tried to write an emotional scene. Ouch ouch ouch. 
> 
> Please enjoy!!

_“They have their exits and their entrances;_

_And one man in his time plays many parts,”_

_William Shakespeare, As You Like it, Act II, Scene VII, lines 141-142._

\--- I ---

Akira didn’t need time to gather supplies so much as he needed time to prepare himself mentally. As he glared at the lavish door separating the service corridor from the theatre hall, he couldn’t help but feel nervous for what he’d find in Goro’s heart. He offhandedly wondered if this is how Makoto had felt on their last expedition into the Metaverse, infiltrating the cognition of someone she loved so much and prying their deepest secrets from them without permission. 

“Ready to go, Joker?” Morgana asked, cocking his head worriedly when he noticed Akira just staring at the door. “You’re spacing out.”

“I’m thinking,” Akira assured him, and then took a breath, trying to square his shoulders so as not to worry his team. “Let’s go in. Everyone, take your places.”

“Almost like we’re in a play,” Haru giggled, and perhaps it was the low anxiety thrumming under Akira’s skin that made the joke fall flat on his end. 

He pushed into the theatre hall without further ado. 

The plush red carpet felt delightful under his heeled shoes, muffling all sounds as he immediately ducked behind a nearby planter to observe. The hallway was rather empty, with only a few richly-dressed guests blabbering incomprehensibly amongst one another in scattered little groups. With it being a dead end, Akira had only one way to go. 

They followed the hallway as it twisted slightly, the noise of the crowd growing as they proceeded until they finally reached what seemed to be the lobby of the theatre. It was a very large, tall-ceiling room, with ivory walls and crystal chandeliers hanging above. The faceless guests from Akechi’s cognition littered the carpeted floor, jam-packed against one another. Their conversations were usually undecipherable to the Thieves’ ears, but Akira did manage to overhear a few thoughts as he pushed his way through the crowd. 

“I can’t wait to see the production they’ve got in the third auditorium.”

“Yes, I’ve heard it’ll be magnificent, a masterpiece, even!” 

“Everyone has been looking forward to it, all that hard work will finally pay off.”

“I’m so curious to see how this will all end…”

“Joker, to your left,” Futaba suddenly called into Akira’s ear, drawing his attention in said direction. “There’s an information booth on the edge of the room. Maybe we can get some intel out of them.”

“Roger,” Akira nodded, tilting his head to the left to motion the vanguard towards their new target. He trusted Futaba to bring up the rear. 

As they got closer, Akira noticed that the information booth was being manned by a Shadow, dressed dapperly in a bright red tuxedo and a matching bell cap to boot. It would have been cute, if Akira didn’t get very strong vibes from it. If that Shadow challenged them, they would have no chance. 

Not like they hadn’t played with fire beforehand, though. It wouldn’t hurt to try.

“Hello, Sir,” the Shadow greeted pleasantly as Akira stopped at the booth. “How may I help you this evening?”

“We were a little lost…” Makoto took over instinctively, Akira letting her lead the negotiation in order to observe their environment a bit more in the meantime. “I believe we have a show to attend in auditorium number three, but we simply could not find our way around to it.”

“Please allow me to assist you, then,” the Shadow bowed lightly to her, reaching out and grabbing a pamphlet. Akira watched its movements carefully for anything sudden. “Here is a map of the facilities,” it began, spreading the pamphlet open on the counter. A full map of the theatre came into view. “We are currently here, in the lobby,” it began, pointing at the large circular room at the front of the Palace. “There is nothing of note to guests on the first floor, but if you climb the stairs over there, you can make it to the second floor.” It paused to point at the grand staircase that led up from the lobby, into the balcony above. 

“I see,” Makoto nodded to encourage it to continue. 

“From there, you may enter this hallway,” the Shadow pointed on the map. “It will take you to the auditoriums. Auditorium One is currently playing an optional piece, so you need not stop there.”

“Optional?” Akira frowned, not understanding. 

“Optional,” the Shadow confirmed pleasantly. “Not many guests choose to view that show, and the master of this theatre does not allow many guests to view it, either.”

“Alright. Please continue,” Akira nodded, filing that information into his brain for later. 

“From there, you may access Auditorium Two,” the Shadow continued, pointing at a larger room on the second floor. “If you have tickets to the show in Auditorium Three, then presumably you have already seen the production in Auditorium Two, correct?”

“Ah, yes,” Makoto nodded quickly, scrambling for a believable comment to make. “It was quite the production. The buildup was incredible.”

“Wasn’t it?” It sounded much too pleased with itself. “In that case, please proceed through Auditorium Two, into Auditorium Three. That is where you will be able to enjoy the final show.”

“Final?” Akira asked, perplexed once again as something seemed not to add up. He glanced at the map once again, tapping his chin in thought. “What of the large circular auditorium here, at the very back of the building? Is there a show playing there?”

“My sincerest apologies, dear guest,” the Shadow began, suddenly seeming a lot more guarded than before. It made Akira’s hand twitch for his dagger. “That auditorium is by guest list only, and the guest list is currently empty. There is nothing of note there.”

“Thank you kindly for your help, then,” Makoto defused the situation, sweeping the map off the counter and folding it up to keep. “We will head on to find our seats.”

“Yes, of course.” The Shadow bowed lightly to them, seemingly backing off. “Enjoy your evening in the Theatre of Deceit.”

“Theatre of Deceit…” Ann muttered as they quickly headed off, glancing at the opulence of the Palace around them uncomfortably. “That doesn’t really sound good…”

“Let’s proceed,” Akira redirected her attention to the staircase instead, unwilling to think about it himself. 

As the map indicated, the lower floor seemed only to have minor areas of interest, such as crowded cocktail lounges, empty dressing rooms, and bathrooms that Ann was much too outraged to allow them to enter. Sweeping the first floor was of no difficulty in that regard. In fact, no Shadows even patrolled the area, which made Akira slightly more nervous in regards to the second floor- no doubt the security being higher nearing the auditoriums. 

Inventory stuffed with their looted finds from the first floor, the team finally backtracked to the lobby about half an hour later, ready to climb the stairs. 

“Let’s be vigilant from here on out,” Makoto advised perhaps needlessly, considering that Akira was already on edge since they arrived.

“Right,” he agreed idly, and led them onto the balcony. 

They encountered the first Shadow on their way out of the lobby area. 

The human-looking Shadow, similarly clothed to the previous one like an usher, was walking up and down the hall, occasionally speaking to guests to indicate where to go. It seemed stiff and perceptive, although Akira’s gut feeling said its power level was nothing too worrisome. It did seem on high alert, however, which was strange. 

With no choice but to engage, he gave the signal to his team to ambush, and waited until he was close enough to jump on it and rip its mask off. 

As he’d guessed, the Shadows that appeared were not too difficult to dispatch, excellent as a warmup. When the last of them dissolved, Futaba’s voice crackled to life in Akira’s ear. 

“Hey. I saw you intercepted the first Shadow, so well done!” She hummed in thought, pausing for a second. “Just letting you know, the security level in this place is crazy high… You’d think Akechi had already been tipped off, or something. Do you know anything about that?”

“I think it might just be his nature,” Makoto sighed from next to him, back pressed against the corner of the velvet-draped wall. “From what my sister tells me, Akechi is cautious all the time. I guess it makes sense, if he’s got something to hide.”

“Still…” Futaba trailed off, but ultimately dropped the subject. “Anyway. Let’s keep on keepin’ on. The first auditorium should be just past the open area coming up!”

“Lead on, Joker,” Ryuji prompted him brightly, and Akira gave him a short nod before stepping out of his hiding spot. 

A few more Shadows stood in their way as they advanced, Akira noticing that the density of Shadows per area was more elevated than in other Palaces they’d visited. Although this meant that they could reduce the security level quickly, it also accumulated fatigue quickly. By the time they’d cleared the first open area, Makoto was ready to be switched out with Morgana for a quick rest. They ducked into a safe room just past the first auditorium in order to regroup and switch places. 

“Alright, so what’s the plan?” Ann asked as they crowded the table in the dressing room that served as their temporary hideout. She glanced at the map Akira held in his hands. 

“I suppose we should check out Auditorium One, since it’s right here,” Yusuke proposed tapping the small auditorium on the map. Compared to the others, it seemed a little cramped. “Perhaps we’ll gain important information out of it.”

“It’s a plan,” Akira agreed, folding the map again and pocketing it. His team hopped off their makeshift seats, the new vanguard following him out first as they re-entered the hallway. 

Turning the corner, Akira’s eyes immediately went to the large, plain-looking black door on the side, a Shadow waiting patiently in the booth before it and paying them no attention. There was an upright sign on the way with some writing that looked quite legible, unlike most of the poorly-defined writing in people’s Palaces. 

Trying not to seem too suspicious, Akira strolled over to the sign, reading the title. 

“ _Prima_ …” he said, not too sure of his pronunciation. He turned to Ann, who was reading over his shoulder. “Panther, do you know what this means?”

“It’s not English, or at least not a word I recognize,” Ann shrugged helplessly. “Sorry. The rest of the text is in Japanese though, so it doesn’t really matter.”

“Alright.” Moving on, Akira read the rest of the poster out loud. “This looks like… a cast list?”

“Hey look!” Morgana pointed out, jumping to reach the upright poster. “Akechi’s name is there!”

“Huh, it really is,” Ryuji hummed, looking at the poster as well. “What’s this say…?”

“Goro Akechi… but his role is defined by a question mark only,” Akira frowned. “There’s also ‘ _Colombina_ ’, played by ‘Mother’. And… ‘Pantalone’, played by more question marks.”

“That’s so confusing…” Ann groaned, tapping her in-ear. “Hey, Queen. Any idea what this could mean?”

“Well,” Makoto’s voice flowed into Akira’s ear, pensive. “Akechi is an orphan, isn’t he? So if we’re seeing mentions of his mother… perhaps this play is a memory of his?”

“Alright Queen!” Ryuji cheered loudly, earning himself an aggressive hush from Ann. “Alright, let’s go see what this play’s all about.”

“Right this way, dear guests,” the Shadow called them over just in time, as if responding to Ryuji’s words. Akira approached him, noting how this Shadow as well was a force to be contended with. It seemed like all of Goro’s gatekeepers were the strongest of the bunch.

“Could we please see the play?” Akira asked, wanting this negotiation to be over with quickly. 

“Of course. May I see your tickets?” the Shadow asked expectantly. 

“Uhh… tickets?” Ann turned to Akira in a panic. “We, uhh… we forgot our, uhh…”

“I see.” The Shadow sobered slightly. “Well, my apologies, but the show in Auditorium One can only be viewed by those to whom the master of this establishment has personally issued tickets.”

“Shoot,” Morgana snapped, frowning. “Does this mean we’ll have to leave the Metaverse and go convince Akechi to let us through in the real world?”

“Well, the information booth Shadow said this play was optional, right?” Ryuji tried cheering them up. “So it’s whatever! Let’s just move on.”

“Still…” It left Akira with a bad taste in his mouth to leave certain parts of Akechi’s Palace unexplored. “Sorry, I’ll just look for my ticket for a moment,” he said to the Shadow, hoping to buy himself some time to think. 

“Of course.” Unimpressed, the Shadow backed off while Akira pretended to pat his pockets in search of something that didn’t exist. 

However, as he patted his pants, something in his left pocket began to weigh down on his leg, heavier and heavier until Akira felt like his knee would collapse. 

“What the…” Groaning at the strain on his leg, he dipped his hand into his pocket, only for his fingers to close around Akechi’s glove. 

He always kept it on him, but he hadn’t realized that it might react to Akechi’s Palace. Something about it felt weird in Akira’s fingers. 

Pulling it out, he had only a second to marvel at how it suddenly felt lighter in his hand before it came out of his pocket. 

Brandished in front of his face, in between his fingers, Akira held a bronze-coloured ticket. The word ‘Joker’ was scrawled in neat penmanship on top of it- Akechi’s handwriting. 

Akira’s heart squeezed, and then began to beat fast. 

“There you go,” he simply said, handing his ticket to the Shadow while Ann did her best to quiet Ryuji’s confused screeching in the background. 

“All seems in order,” the Shadow acknowledged, handing the punched ticket back to Akira. He slipped it into his pocket, only to feel it morph back into a leather glove. Odd. “Do your companions have tickets as well?”

“No, they, uhh…” Akira turned to glance at them in a quick panic. Thankfully, he noticed Makoto breaking off from the rearguard and advancing towards them in determination. “No, they were simply bringing me here.”

“They’re all with me,” Makoto brusquely said as she arrived, grabbing Ryuji by the neck and Morgana by the scruff. “Sorry for the intrusion, we’ll be going.”

Akira watched as their fearless advisor dragged the boys away towards the rearguard, Ann following sheepishly. Futaba’s voice buzzed to life in his ear as he turned to face the auditorium entrance again. 

“Seems like you’re going on this quest alone,” she hummed, not seeming too worried. “I’m not getting any Shadow readings from the auditorium, but it’s hard to tell. I don’t think my signal will reach you inside that room, so don’t let your guard down.”

“Got it,” Akira nodded, heading past the Shadow in the bell cap, hands on the door. 

“We’ll wait for you in the safe room,” Futaba finished, her voice becoming slightly distorted as Akira entered the auditorium. “Good luck!”

When the door slammed shut behind him, Futaba’s voice also disappeared. Akira was left alone, in the dark, in complete silence.

\--- II ---

There wasn’t much to look at in the new area, Akira quickly determined as he explored. The term ‘auditorium’ seemed a bit stretched when it came to this room, tiny and unlit, with only a dozen or so seats available in front of a small stage. A single white light hung above the stage, giving Akira the chance not to trip on his own feet as he approached the front cautiously. As Futaba said, there were no hostiles in the room with him- he really was all alone. 

It freaked him out just a little bit. 

For a while, nothing happened. Nobody came onto the stage, and Akira wondered if there was something he’d missed. However, figuring he’d try everything, he walked up to the first row, and sat down in a random seat. 

Near-immediately, a chime rang out in the air. 

Before Akira could wonder what that was about, his attention was caught by someone walking onto the stage. 

He didn’t recognize the woman, but he could guess from the poster that this was Colombina, Goro’s mother. She wore a long, loosely flowing white dress that caressed the ground she walked on barefoot, caressing a bundle of sheets that she rocked in her arms. Her face was uncovered, the circles under her eyes betraying the serene expression she held. 

“Are children imposed the same as children chosen?” she began, halting underneath the white light. “Are the children borne of love the same as children borne of rage?” Lifting the bundle up into the light, she gazed at it with such sorrow that Akira’s heart clenched. “What gives you the right to exist if I choose not to let you?”

Pinching one end of the bundle, she pulled, unrolling the sheets and letting them cascade over her head. There was nothing left in her hands as she pulled the white cloth around her shoulders like a shawl, the bundle having been empty from the start. 

“Mama?” a tiny voice called from the backstage, and Akira’s heart skipped a beat. 

Tiny footsteps pattering on the rotten wood stage preceded the arrival of the child in the monologue, and Akira felt like he could combust on the spot at the sight of him. Suddenly, he felt like she shouldn’t be seeing this at all. 

“Darling,” Colombina beckoned, and the young boy with fluffy brown hair ran over to bury his face in her skirts. She caressed his unruly hair lovingly. “Another day passes and you remind me only of violence.”

“Mama, it isn’t my fault, is it?” the young boy asked, eyes wide as he glanced up at her. He loved her, and Akira could tell. 

“No, it isn’t,” Colombina assured him, then turned her head to face the other way. “Yes, it is,” she murmured, her expression pained. 

“Mama, do you love me?” the young boy asked once more, and Colombina turned to give him a smile. 

“Yes, I do,” she assured him, and then again, turned her head to face away from him. “No, I don’t,” she murmured with the same pained expression.

“You’re all I have, Mama,” the boy continued, taking Colombina’s hand and dragging her towards the edge of the stage. “You’re all I know. I wish it would forever be so.”

“What will you do when you lose me?” the woman asked, kneeling to caress the child’s face softly. “If I am all you have, won’t you be alone when I am gone?”

“You won’t leave me,” the child grinned brightly, said with such conviction that Akira’s heart dropped. 

From the backstage suddenly came heavy footsteps, the very ground shaking as they landed. Colombina halted the conversation and pushed her son behind her skirts, hiding him when a man suddenly came on stage. 

“Pantalone,” Colombina murmured, and she didn’t sound surprised. In fact, she simply looked resigned.

Unlike the two previous actors, this one wore a half-mask, its facial structure bony with prominent eyebrows and a hooked nose. The actor himself had undistinguishable features, wearing a sleazy outfit with his chest wide open. 

“Mine, all mine,” Pantalone simply said, and roughly grabbed Colombina’s arm. Akira was nearly out of his seat, finding the scene all too familiar, before he reminded himself that this was likely just a memory. He sat down, although he didn’t stop feeling antsy. 

“Mama?” the boy asked again, fearful now. 

“Go to the bathhouse,” Colombina simply said, closing her eyes. “It will all be over soon.”

Nodding fearfully, the child backed away a few steps, standing alone in the light while his mother was handled by the man before her. 

“I am alright,” she assured her son, and perhaps herself, unresisting when Pantalone ripped off her shawl and walked off with it, past the child to disappear backstage. As soon as he left, another man came on stage, wearing different clothes but the very same austere mask. 

“Give, for it is all you are good for,” the man growled, grabbing Colombina’s skirts and pulling, tearing the light fabric right off of her and leaving her in scraps that barely protected her modesty. 

“Mama!” the young boy cried out again, tears in his eyes, cowering when Pantalone stomped off past him, backstage. 

Again, another man, in the very same mask, walked on stage and tore the buttons over Colombina’s breast right open, showing the cleavage underneath. 

“Good for nothing whore,” the man spat on her, and Colombina simply sighed and let him. She closed her eyes as he plucked the buttons off her dress, and walked off with them in hand, leaving her nearly bare. 

The child shielded himself as Pantalone approached, flinching when the buttons of his mother’s dress were thrown at him, bouncing off his arms and clattering to the floor. 

When he disappeared, no new men came. 

“Love,” Colombina called, turning around to face her son even in all her indecent glory. “Would you like me to buy you a new toy?”

“Mama, no!” the child cried, big tears rolling off his cheeks and making Akira’s eyes water as well. “All I want is you!”

“Pantalone’s greed knows no bounds. You know that there are no parts of me left to give,” Colombina admonished softly as if scolding him for a minor fault. The child cried harder, and in the meantime, another Pantalone stepped onto the stage, circling Colombina with his arms. His hands roamed, groping and touching, and Colombina simply bared her neck, letting him. 

Akira found it hard to watch, turning his eyes away, to the young boy still crying in the lamp light. He felt nauseated at the realization that this was likely something from Goro’s past, something that he’d alluded to nonchalantly once in a while during their heart-to-hearts. But that nonchalance was nothing compared to the anguish of the young boy on the stage, confused, scared, and only asking to be loved. 

Akira only turned his eyes back to Colombina when he noticed Pantalone walking off, past the child quieting down, all cried out. 

“Mama, please,” he begged, sniffling pathetically. “I love you. Do you love me?”

“Oh, darling,” Colombina murmured, approaching the child slowly. She clutched in her hand something solid, the shape of which was obscured by the penumbra on stage. Akira watched each of her slow footsteps with dread. 

Finally, she knelt before him, the object in her hand clinking like metal when she placed it down behind her, drawing her son’s face in to kiss his forehead tenderly. 

“I do love you, but in turn, I hate everything about you,” she admitted, grabbing the object again and putting it up into the light. Akira recognized it immediately. 

A gun. 

She pressed it to her forehead, and breathless in terror, Akira shut his eyes. 

_BANG._

The child screamed, loud, devastated, broken.

Akira listened to him, still not daring to open his eyes, still feeling his heartbeat thundering in his ribcage and choking him with tears of sorrow and anger for the scene he’d witnessed. The young boy’s loss felt intimate, and Akira just wanted to make his suffering stop.

Eventually, the screaming died off, and the light went out. That was when Akira chanced a look at the dark stage, oddly relieved to note that it was completely empty when the singular light came back on. There was no body on the floor, no blood pooling in the rotten wood. 

The same chime as before rang out in the air. 

“Fifteen-minute intermission,” an airy voice announced on the intercom, seemingly unbothered by the tragedy that took place in this very room. 

Shakily standing, Akira figured it wasn’t a bad idea to get some air, letting his weak legs carry him towards the door, and back out into the brightly lit hallway. 

The Shadow at the door didn’t address him, and Akira was grateful for it. He didn’t feel like he could talk past the ball in his throat, and spent a few minutes shuffling towards the safe room, trying to regain his bearings. 

He only entered the safe room when he felt presentable, although the immediate looks of concern he received proved that perhaps he didn’t look presentable at all. 

“Holy shit, are you okay?” Ryuji was the first to exclaim, jumping out of his seat to offer his shoulder to his best friend. Akira waved him off gratefully, sitting down on the makeup chair that Haru hurriedly vacated. 

“Joker, are you alright?” Morgana asked urgently, watching him take his mask off to wipe the sweat off his forehead. “Goodness, your face is all white!”

“What happened?” Makoto jumped in, worried. “Do you need healing?”

“No, I’m…” Okay seemed like a bad word to use. “… I’m not hurt.”

“What happened in there?” Futaba pressed, watching their leader slip the mask back over his pale face. “You didn’t get ambushed, did you?”

“No, no,” Akira reassured. “Like Queen guessed, it was only a memory.”

“That bad?” Ryuji winced empathetically with his distress. “So? What was it? What did you see?”

Akira didn’t know how he would explain the horrifying scene he’d watched. In the first place, it felt a little too personal, too important to Goro for him to be sharing it without his consent. It was a vulnerable part of him that he’d shared with Akira, subconsciously willingly at least if the glove-turned-ticket was anything to go by.

“I don’t think it’s something I should be telling without Goro’s permission,” he finally decided, letting out a deep sigh. “I don’t think he’d want anybody to know.”

“Now that’s just ominous,” Ann commented, genuinely worried, even if Akechi was to be their enemy in a week’s time. He was just a boy, in the end, their own age with an entire life ahead of him. “You sure you’ll be okay?”

“I’m sure,” Akira said, trying to make it seem believable. He straightened his back a little to pretend he felt better. “I’ll just wait for the intermission to be over here.”

“There’s another part to the play?” Yusuke asked curiously, humming in thought. “ _Prima_ , it was called… I wonder what that means.”

“Totally would translate it if I had access to Papago in here,” Futaba bemoaned. “Sadly, we don’t get wi-fi in Palaces.”

“Was that… a joke?” Yusuke seemed confused, and then embarrassed when Futaba simply cackled at his plight. 

Their conversation became a background noise that Akira indulged in for a few minutes, until the very same announcement chime rang out through the intercoms. 

“That’s you.” Morgana patted Akira’s leg to draw his attention, and the latter took a deep breath before standing up. 

“Break a leg out there!” Ann cheered him on, hoping to ease him into the second half. 

“Erm… isn’t that what you say to the actors, not to the spectators…?” Makoto frowned, and her concerned expression at least drew a smile out of Akira. 

“I’ll be back when it’s done,” he assured them, and swept out of the room without another word. 

He turned the corner towards the first auditorium once more, noticing as he approached that the upright stand with the cast list had changed. Curiously, he glanced at it to confirm the new roles. 

**_ Prima II_ **

**???: Goro Akechi**

**Il Dottore : ???**

**Arlecchino : Goro Akechi**

Odd of Akechi to play two roles in the same play, but Akira didn’t think too hard about it, instead brushing past the poster to enter the auditorium again. 

The place remained dimly lit, although another light had been turned on, exposing more incriminating details about the unkempt auditorium. Akira could see the cobwebs hanging on the ceiling, and figured that Akechi didn’t revisit these memories often at all. 

The next thing he noticed in the new light was the presence of people in the audience. 

It sent shivers down his spine as he realized that the meagre number of seats were all full, except for the one he had chosen at the beginning. The people in the audience were more faceless cognitions, their hushed murmurs indecipherable to Akira as he cautiously inched by. They were all adults, men and women, dressed unlike the other guests of the theatre, their clothes instead a little more casual. Akira couldn’t put his finger on it, but a lot of their fashion seemed reminiscent of his childhood. 

Reaching the front row, he sat down, and when he tore his eyes away from the unnerving crowd, the lights dimmed and the play began. 

The young boy who walked onto the stage was slightly older than the child from the first part, but they were unmistakably the same person. He wore no mask this time either. His sandy brown hair had grown, now more curly and unruly, his dark red eyes glinting softly in the spotlight as he slowly strode towards the center of the stage. 

“The first betrayal I felt happened before I could even feel; sightless, lifeless, barely growing in my mother’s womb,” he began his monologue in a somber voice. “That first betrayal was that of my father, greedily taking from my mother as men did before and after him, and giving her, in return, her demons. The second betrayal,” he immediately segued with new force in his tone, “was that of my mother, who chose to hate her demons instead of loving me.”

He stopped in the middle of the stage, glancing off into the distance. 

“The third betrayal…” and he trailed off, closing his eyes and taking a heavy breath. From the backstage, four more actors walked onto the stage, silently crossing over to place themselves around the young boy in a semi-circle. Their costumes were all different, dressed in the same casual business style as the cognitions in the audience, but they wore masks that were completely identical to one another; one-third masks that were ebony black, cheekbones uncovered but nose prominently displayed on the actors’ faces. The characters of _Il Dottore_ , if Akira remembered the poster correctly. 

Once they were in place, the boy opened his eyes, and strode towards the first one on his right. 

“The third betrayal… was it you, _Dottore_?” he asked, glancing up at the man above him. 

Il Dottore simply sneered, and slapped the boy across the face, the sound of stricken flesh reverberating in the auditorium. Akira swallowed heavily, eyes trained on the young boy, who didn’t move despite the blow.

“This world is subject to adults’ wisdom,” the man declared, voice gruff and deep. “Children like you have no knowledge, and therefore no voice.”

“Adults know best,” the second Dottore said, extending his hand towards the boy. With no other recourse, the boy advanced and took it, only for the grip to shift and grab his wrist roughly instead. “Why don’t you listen to the wisdom I have for you? You will be no one if you do not learn to keep quiet and listen to the adults.”

“Let me go free,” the boy pleaded, struggling lightly in the man’s hold. “Is this another betrayal- to have promised me a life and to have neglected me instead?”

“Be quiet!” his captor ordered, and then pushed him to the next Dottore standing nearby. The young boy stumbled under the force of those manhandling him, and once he was close enough to the next one, a hand fisted in his soft hair, pulling roughly. 

The boy cried out in pain once again, and Akira’s heartstrings tugged in every direction. 

“There is no betrayal if there were no promises made,” the third man explained, patiently and condescendingly as the child struggled to break free. “Understand this- that you are worth nothing to this world. Your very existence is cursed; who could love you when even your own flesh and blood left you behind?”

“Betrayal, betrayal!” the child cried out once more, tears running down his unmasked face and marring the smoothness of his chubby cheeks. “You were to be the father I never had- so why are you so horrible to your son?”

“You are no son of mine,” the man spat out, roughly shoving the young boy to the next Dottore, awaiting his turn patiently. “You are nobody- this is my wisdom as an adult.”

Face in his hands to collect his own tears, the young boy ambled forward until he found himself in the arms of the last Dottore. This one did not grab him nor hurt him, but placed a hand on his head to stop him and get his attention. 

“It is true, you know,” the fourth man began, gentle and chiding. “Your parents chose to leave you behind, robbing you of any birthright you may have had, and thus you find yourself to be a nobody in this world full of adults. If only you had something remarkable to you, something you could flaunt as your own wisdom, but alas- there is nothing. If you died now, there would be no loss.”

“Your lack of violence is not a kindness,” the boy murmured, looking away from the tall man. “You, too, betray me with your words.”

“Expect no more from the world you live in,” the fourth man advised him, and then gently pushed him forward. 

Heartbroken, the boy stumbled back into his original spot in the middle of the stage, all four Dottore actors circling him like hounds on wounded prey. He still cried softly, his tears silently dripping down his youthful face. Akira suddenly wished he could hold him and convince him otherwise. 

“Nobody,” the four men called in unison, causing the boy to flinch. “Nobody wants you, for you are nobody.”

“I see,” the boy sniffled pathetically, stepping back slowly. Behind him, the men turned to exit the stage, two on each side until the boy was alone yet again. 

It seemed to be a common theme in this play. 

“So as it seems, there was no third betrayal,” he began, his voice shaking. “As it seems, after mother died, the days blurred together, one betrayal overlapping the next until I could no longer tell where truth began and ended. If there ever was any truth told to me at all. Perhaps they were right- the people who tried to love me and failed. It must have been my fault, I must have betrayed myself in the end.” 

Turning to give his back to the crowd, the boy suddenly fell to his knees, a dull thud on rotted wood as he curled up with his forehead on the floor. From the ceiling, a delicate cloth floated down, specks of dust carried down along with it, until it draped itself perfectly over the young man’s form. 

For a moment, all was quiet, the air itself still in anticipation for what came next. 

And then, all of a sudden, the boy stood up, whirling the cloth as he swept it off of himself and made an energetic spin to face the audience again. 

He wore a mask now- bright gold and nearly covering his entire face, nose pudgy and forehead bumpy to look somewhat ridiculous. His posture had changed as well, now something more flamboyant, acrobatic in the way he circled the stage. 

“I see!” the masked boy cried out like a victory. “If it is my existence that is erasable, then it is also mine to mould, shape into an existence worth having!” He did a quick pirouette, and let out a bright laugh that didn’t quite put Akira to ease just yet. “If it is the wisdom of this world to discard the unworthy, then all I must do is make of myself someone worth existing! Then, no one shall hurt me any longer- not men, nor the ghosts that haunt me!”

To that, for the first time, the faceless audience reacted. A few laughs popped up amongst them, along with a few claps, and although Akira felt horrified by the audience’s response to such a self-destructive monologue, the young boy on the stage only looked encouraged by them.

“That’s right!” he crowed triumphantly, bright grin visible underneath his mask. “If being loved is as easy as being needed, then I shall discard myself entirely and become a man that the world needs. When people look at me, they shall see my mask and adore me- Arlecchino!”

A few more people in the crowd whistled and clapped, which drove Arlecchino to saunter around the stage, collecting his praise. 

“Mistake, they called me,” he continued, the ecstasy in his voice making Akira feel sick to the stomach. “Mistake, useless, unwanted bastard son of a whore- no more!” Halting in the spotlight, he lifted his arms in the air, chest puffed out with misplaced pride. “Today, I betray myself one final time, and become the man who will tear this world down in retribution!”

With a flourish and then bending at the waist, he bowed low until his extended hands brushed the ground. 

Around Akira, the small crowd burst into applause, eerily in sync with one another. Akira himself couldn’t understand why- the sheer suffering that Akechi had lived before losing it and creating his new persona was nothing to be amazed with. In fact, it made Akira angry, that nobody had been able to help the young boy before things got that bad. That people had knowingly pushed him far enough for him to lose himself, and had only felt glee in return.

If this was Akechi’s cognition, then both the men on stage and the people in the audience must have been people from his numerous foster families- all of them indiscriminately applauding his descent into madness. 

It made Akira sick.

Unable to look at the masked cognition of his rival bowing on the stage any longer, Akira got up, and swept past the clapping cognitive crowd to exit the auditorium with haste. 

\--- III ---

In a move that Akira was immensely grateful for, his team seemed to have come to a silent agreement not to ask him about the play he’d seen in Auditorium One, simply making sure he was taking the developments in stride before heading out of the safe room, falling into their usual pattern once more. They continued their infiltration as planned from there on out, which meant that Akira had to focus on sneaking and ambushing successfully instead of mulling over Akechi’s painful childhood memories. 

More than ever before, he began to wonder if perhaps they’d made the wrong call by infiltrating his Palace, if they were breaking something here that could never be fixed again. 

They took a detour to grab one of Akechi’s Will Seeds, locked behind an ornate door barred off with velvet ropes. Cruel whispers of childhood abuse and neglect hung in the air inside the tiny forgotten room, and it seemed like Akira was the only one on the team contextually aware enough to decipher their murmurs. 

_“Die, worthless child.”_

_“Unwanted waste of space.”_

_“Pathetic bastard.”_

_“Son of a whore.”_

Akira had to marvel, in light of all these nauseating truths, at how well Akechi had done to even get this far in life. Although they’d established that his personality as they knew him was constructed, merely a front for the public to adore, Akira couldn’t help but wonder what it was, truly, that drove him to fight so hard. 

Although it was employed differently from the Phantom Thieves, Goro Akechi still had the inextinguishable fire of rebellion inside his soul as well. It was easy to forget that when thinking of him as a villain for the good guys to outsmart. 

The Red Seed of Deceit weighed heavy in Akira’s hand as he plucked it, and pocketed it without further ado. The whispers disappeared alongside it, and he let out a sigh of relief almost reflexively. 

Within the hour, they’d advanced further, past the corridors and open area where cognitive crowds were gathered to discuss the plays they were watching. The Shadows had not relented their merciless assault on the Thieves, either, more often than not astute enough to see through Akira’s sneaking and thus being difficult to ambush. Akira figured that this was due to Akechi’s fine control of his Persona- for the Shadows in his heart to be more refined and organized than other Palace rulers’.

When the safe room around the corner from Auditorium Two came into view, the Thieves nearly collapsed into it from sheer relief. 

“Man, Akechi really doesn’t cut corners on defending his Palace, huh?” Ryuji sighed, kicking his legs up on the table, facing away from the girls huddled near the vanity mirrors to tend to their wounds. Ann had a nasty gash on her collarbone which needed to be accessed by peeling her outfit down, which left the boys to face the poster-covered wall while the girls worked. 

“The Shadows in Akechi’s heart are so much smarter than the others we’ve fought so far,” Morgana bemoaned, adjusting the healing patch he’d slapped onto his arm after a particularly challenging encounter a while back. “So this is what it’s like in the Palace of a Persona user.”

“Intriguing, but also exhausting,” Yusuke commented, looking into one of the hand mirrors to dab away at a bleeding cut on his temple. It had resulted from when he was knocked down by an unfortunate blast of fire, and although a Takemedic had controlled the immediate concussive symptoms, it still left him with a minor headache and an annoying wound that soaked blood into his hair. 

“If his Palace was not so small in size, we probably wouldn’t be able to infiltrate it in one day,” Morgana remarked. “Lucky for us, considering the time crunch.”

“Right,” Akira nodded, glancing down at his rolled up coat sleeves under which his bandages from a myriad minor wounds had already soaked through. Nothing about their circumstances felt fortunate, neither for them nor for Akechi, but he felt like he shouldn’t be honest for the sake of the team’s morale. “Lucky.”

“Okay, done,” Haru finally announced from behind them, giving the boys the green light to turn around. Ann was manipulating her arm gingerly, a large dressing covering her collarbone and dipping into the window of her costume. It was unsightly. 

“Is it bad?” Akira asked, always concerned with the state of his team members. It was quite common for them to sustain minor injuries during their infiltrations, most of which would have disappeared without trace upon their return to the real world if treated correctly in the Metaverse, but he still couldn’t help but take responsibility for the bigger injuries, seeing as he was their leader.

“Not as bad as it could’ve been if Skull hadn’t pushed her out of the way,” Makoto explained, giving Ryuji a grateful nod of her head. Ryuji accepted it with his cheeks flushed red, unsure how to react to the rare praise. “It’ll be tender when we get back to the real world, but probably won’t scar.”

“Here,” Akira decided then, throwing Ann a life stone. With her cat-like reflexes, she snatched it out of the air, and crushed it in her palm to release the healing energy. 

“Thanks, Joker,” she nodded to him, continuing to cradle her arm. “If it’s all the same to you, I’ll sit a few rounds out.”

“That’s fine,” Akira agreed, glancing at Haru. “Noir, can you take her place in the front?”

“Of course!” the older girl said brightly, eager to help. 

“Then we should move out before the Shadows have time to regroup,” Morgana advised. “The second auditorium is around the corner, so we should go investigate it as soon as we can.”

“Alright.” Getting up from his seat and stretching his legs, Akira turned to the door. “Noir, Mona, Queen, up front. Let’s get back into it.”

The pleasantly light air of the theatre hall welcomed them as they stepped out of the safe room, circling a few groups of cognitive guests and turning down the hall. As they neared the second auditorium, Akira noticed how there were suddenly more cognitive guests around than before. Considering the audience in the first auditorium, Akira wondered if the size of the crowd represented how many people knew of that particular part of Akechi. 

Another upright sign greeted them near the entrance to the second auditorium, much larger and more inviting than the first. This one as well, in similar format, indicated the cast list for the play being presented. 

**_ Adesso I_ **

**Zanni: Goro Akechi**

**Magnifico: Masayoshi Shido**

It was a shorter list than the previous players, piquing Akira’s curiosity as to the nature of the memory being re-enacted. He vaguely recognized the second name, but he couldn’t quite place it. If they had any wi-fi in the Palace they would’ve been able to look him up, but for now, the second actor remained a mystery. 

“A…desso,” Haru read off the poster, blinking owlishly at it. “I don’t suppose anybody knows what this means, either?”

“Nope,” Makoto sighed, although she didn’t look too concerned. “It doesn’t matter for now. Let’s just find a way into the auditorium.”

“Hopefully we won’t need any more tickets, which begs the question, Joker… how did you even have that first ticket on you?” Morgana raised a brow at him, trying to see right through him. 

Unfortunately for their furry friend, Akira was excellent at keeping secrets. 

“Thieves’ honour,” he simply said, throwing a finger up to his lips in a cocky motion to hush Morgana, and then turned to the Shadow manning the usher’s booth before them. 

“Good evening, esteemed guests,” the Shadow greeted them, bowing. Its bell cap didn’t move an inch in the fight against gravity. “Welcome to Auditorium Two. Were you interested in attending the production?”

“Yes,” Akira simply said, taking charge of the negotiation. 

“Surprising!” the Shadow hummed, pleased. “This production is open to viewership by any interested guest of the theatre, however not many choose to watch it.”

“Is there a reason for it?” Akira asked, frowning lightly. 

“It just isn’t all that interesting compared to the productions in Auditorium Three,” the Shadow explained off-handedly. “Most people flock there for entertainment instead. But if you wish to enjoy this show, then please, by all means do!”

“Thank you,” Akira simply said, finishing off his surprisingly easy negotiation with yet another simple answer. He seemed to be successful, as the Shadow did nothing to stop them when they went for the door. 

“That was easy,” Makoto remarked in a relieved tone as they entered the auditorium. “It makes me curious about Auditorium Three, however…”

“We’ll get there eventually,” Morgana reassured her, then turned to the room. “Now. What should we do?”

“Let’s find some seats,” Akira directed, knowing what to do after having experienced the first auditorium. The second one was much nicer and larger, its colour scheme a deep red with heavy brown wood, the stage nice and polished with velvet curtains closed in front of it. Dimmed yellow lights cast shadows on the room, a stark difference from the first auditorium pitched in darkness. There was a small balcony above on the second floor, although the crowd was small enough for them not to bother with the higher level, and instead claim seats on the mezzanine. 

“This is nice,” Haru commented as they slid into the cushioned seats, removing her extravagant hat as not to block the view for the cognitive guests seated a few rows behind them. “I’ve seen a few performances in theatres like these before, mostly individual musicians.”

“It has a very adult feel to it,” Makoto admitted, chuckling to herself. “I like it.”

“Yo!”

Twisting in their seats, the four of them waved to Futaba, who was leading the rearguard down to the front. There was a bit of shuffling and scooting to get everybody into their seats, but they got settled easily in the end. 

“It was way too easy to get in this time around,” Ryuji said, kicking his feet up onto the seat in front of him. Ann let out an offended noise and forced them right back down. 

“The Shadow did indicate that this production was open to all guests, so there really is no noteworthy effort on our end,” Yusuke pointed out, rolling his shoulder. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Ryuji sighed, dropping his head back against the cushion. “Just lemme celebrate for a second, would ya?” 

Akira allowed himself a small smile at the expense of his friend, although he didn’t feel like his heart was truly in it. There was still some apprehension in his stomach at the memory of the first play, and he wondered if the second one would be anything like it. 

Almost as if reading his mood, the lights overhead began to dim into darkness, the announcement chime ringing out into the air. 

“Ooh, it’s starting!” Ann gasped, shifting all of their attention to the curtain slowly beginning to slide open on the stage.

Akira’s eyes were riveted on the platform as it began to show, heart skipping a beat when a human figure appeared from behind the curtain. The backlight illuminated the person’s shape, making them seem blinding for a moment before Akira’s eyes refocused, and realized it was Akechi once again, older now, well into his teenage years. 

His rival struck a strange pose as the scene began, hunched over with his arms bent close and fingers clawed out. His weight leaned forward and had extended his neck, leading his entire body forward with the impressive nose on his mask- the same one he wore on his excursions to the Metaverse. 

Akira wondered what it was supposed to mean, both for the actor on the stage and his rival’s cognition of himself. 

Finally, when the curtains opened completely, the actor stood still for a few beats longer, and then craned his neck towards the audience. 

“Was it simply through hardship that my power was born,” he said, “or was it divine providence that I should receive it?”

“Whoa, why’s he talking like that?” Futaba huffed. “So fancy…”

“But if it was by godly will that I should be allowed to judge the men on this earth, what is it that I am fated to accomplish?” He continued his monologue, looking down pitifully at his hands. “There is a world out there that only I am allowed to enter, to discover the darkest depths of the human heart… but the depths are cold, and I am afraid.” Turning his eyes to the heavens, the teenager raised his voice. “What is it that I am supposed to do!?”

“Is he perhaps talking about when he gained his power to enter the Metaverse?” Makoto frowned, pensive. “We knew he was lying to us, but for him to have been so young… He’s had this power for years now, it seems.”

“Isn’t this a bit much for a kid to be handling all by himself?” Ann replied in a soft whisper, eyes downcast as she watched the actor hop around the stage, his body led forward by his huge nose as if searching for something. “At least we had each other from the start…”

“It hurts,” the actor cried out, his body language still totally opposite to his words as he sauntered along the stage before stopping at the end of it. “Won’t anyone help me? Won’t anyone tell me what I am supposed to do? This power is mine but I feel so isolated- what worth is it to me if it only brings me pain?”

His monologue now seemingly finished, the young man turned his eyes to the heavens again for an answer, and in turn, the heavens boomed. 

“Zanni!”

Akira jumped in his seat at the thundering voice that rang out in the auditorium, not having expected it. Zanni, however, seemed unsurprised, although very intrigued as he turned his beak-like nose towards the other end of the stage. 

“Could it be…” he murmured, eyes wide underneath his mask. “After all this time…?”

As soon as he trailed off, footsteps began to hit the polished hardwood floor, and a new actor entered the scene, standing tall and intimidating at the other edge of the stage. He was a very tall man, well built and likely in his late 40’s, dressed finely in a business suit and his bald head clean shaven meticulously. The mask he wore was intimidating- scary, even- a dirtied gold colour half-mask with frown lines and wrinkles, as well as a large, crooked nose that made the man seem harsh and cruel. There was a powerful air to him, one that Akira felt even from his seat in the audience, simply in watching the way his body seemed to tower over everyone else in the room, Phantom Thieves included. 

“Zanni,” the man called out again, and Akira noticed the way that Zanni flinched at his voice. “You there. Are you Zanni?”

The gears were clearly turning in the young man’s head, and Akira watched as his clawed hands clenched while he processed his answer. 

Finally, the young man shifted his weight into something lighter, and hunched his back again, turning his nose towards the newcomer on the other side of the stage. 

“Magnifico!” he called out, sauntering a few steps forward. “Of course you are Magnifico, Sir, with power like that!”

“And who are you to address me, servant?” the tall man spat, chest puffed out and spine erect as he walked towards the center of the stage in slow, commanding steps. “Tell me now or get out of my way.”

“Master!” Zanni crowed in delight, hopping forward once again and lowering himself the closer he got to the other actor, until they stood side by side in the center-stage. “I am but a humble servant who’s just arrived in the city looking for work- with my talents, Sir, won’t you hire me?”

“Hmm…” Magnifico seemed to consider him, looking down on him like debating if he should crush a bug underfoot or not. “Your talent may be great, but your resolve is not. You will work for me, and your power shall only serve me.”

“Of course, Magnifico,” Zanni nodded frantically, pitifully craning his neck to look up at his new master. 

“Is this the man pulling the strings behind Akechi?” Haru remarked pensively, eyes riveted on the uncomfortable exchange between the actors. “The one from the phone conversation that Oracle tapped… And his name on the poster… Shido, I believe?”

“That does ring a bell, but I can’t recall who that is…” Makoto sighed, frustrated with herself. “Does this mean that Akechi has been working for this man for years? Why? What does he have to gain?”

“Shhh,” Morgana insisted, drawing their attention back to the scene on the stage. “My gut says we’ll find out, so let’s just watch the play for now.”

When Akira turned his attention back to the play, he noticed that Zanni was holding himself even lower now, knees nearly crumpling in his bid to become small next to Magnifico. It was unsightly for a man as proud as Goro Akechi, and Akira felt nauseous at the terrifying dynamic of power displayed before him, but something told him this wasn’t all there was to it. 

“Now for your work,” Magnifico started again, pulling out a paper and throwing it down to his servant, who fumbled to catch it before it hit the ground. “Eliminate these people. They stand in my way to greatness, and there can only ever be one Magnifico- one man to rule them all.”

“Eliminate them…?” Zanni reiterated, looking slightly more uncomfortable now that his eyes scoured the list in his hand. “How do you mean…?”

“Destroy their hearts from the shadows and leave no trail of your deeds, of course,” Magnifico explained haughtily, as if he couldn’t be bothered. “With your power, it should be easy. And from there, I will make you great- you’ll have riches and fame all thanks to my grace, and when I ascend to power, I will bring you along with me on my ship while the rest of the world sinks below me.”

“Wait, no way, is this Akechi’s confession as the culprit behind the mental shutdowns!?” Ann exclaimed all of a sudden, earning herself a harsh hush from the cognitive crowd behind her. She sunk into her seat, but she still looked shaken. 

Akira’s throat felt too tight for him to formulate an answer. 

“It seems to be…” Makoto pursed her lips, undecided between feeling angry or sad. “But this man, Magnifico… he’s the one behind it all…”

“But S-Sir,” Zanni continued, eyes wide and shoulders caved in, looking like he wanted to disappear. “I don’t know if-”

“Are you questioning me, Zanni?” Magnifico cut him off, his hand snapping forward to grab his servant by the upper arm and pull him up, grip tight and painful if the look on Zanni’s face was anything to go by. “After I’ve been so benevolent as to give you everything… You are but a gutter rat without me, unwanted and alone, and you will always be the dirt under the adults’ shoes. Would you truly turn down my offer for money, status, for praise you so desire?”

“N-No Sir,” Zanni murmured, tense in his master’s vice-like grip. Akira felt his limbs tense, too, his entire being compelling him to get up from his seat and save the young man on the stage. 

“This is terrible,” Yusuke murmured, eyes downcast. “I understand that these are dramatized recollections, but isn’t this still abuse of a child?”

“I mean, when you say it like that…” Ryuji winced when Magnifico huffed, throwing Zanni down to the floor. The young man hit the hardwood on his hands and knees, trembling. “Yeah…”

“Get started on your work,” Magnifico simply said, looking condescendingly down at the bowed form kneeling before him. “And never forget that I am the one who gave you the right to live.”

“Yes Sir, of course Sir,” Zanni simply replied, leaning even more forward to kiss Magnifico’s shoes. “As my Master orders it.”

“Oh, this is just uncomfortable to watch now,” Futaba groaned, hiding her face in her hands. “What the hell is this memory anyway?”

“Where it all began,” Akira answered solemnly, watching with immense sadness and outrage as Zanni kissed Magnifico’s feet a few more times with very extravagant enthusiasm, staying bowed when the man finally kicked him off, and began to head away. “Akechi…”

Magnifico’s heels clicked on the hardwood as he walked away from Zanni without a glance back, stride unhalted until he exited the stage opposite from where he entered. In the meantime, the servant stayed bowed, waiting for the man to disappear before lifting his head. 

“Giving me the right to live,” he simply repeated, sounding venomous all of a sudden in a very abrupt change of character. “Who does he think he is?”

Slowly, Zanni stood, as if his limbs were stuck in molasses, stumbling like he’d lost control of his own body. There was something unnatural about the way he moved, jerking in every direction like a puppet on a string. 

“Riches, fame…” he scoffed, throwing his head back so that his long-nosed mask glinted in the spotlight, unhindered by his long hair. “Magnifico doesn’t realize that what I desire most is neither of those.” Letting out a short, deranged laugh, he jerked back upright, grinning wildly at where Magnifico had stepped off the stage. “Magnifico, my first betrayal…. what I desire most is revenge,” he revealed, and something clicked into place in Akira’s head. 

His first betrayal. 

His father. 

The man behind the mask- Shido- was Akechi’s long-lost father. 

The realization made the situation even more twisted and uncanny than before, Akira feeling sick to the stomach. 

“They say that when Magnifico dies,” Zanni continued, slowly striding towards the stage exit on the right, “another Magnifico immediately appears to replace him.” He stopped just before the curtain, shoes clicking decisively on the wood. “My Master had better remember that.”

With that, he exited, and the front curtains began to slide shut. 

“Holy shit,” Ryuji said immediately, jumping from his seat to look at everyone else. “What the hell did we just see?”

“Fifteen-minute intermission,” the airy announcement chimed above, the lights slowly dimming back on. 

“Perhaps we should take a break,” Haru suggested, getting up and smoothing her shorts. “We should talk about this outside.”

“Good idea,” Akira acquiesced, feeling antsy to stretch his legs after having been tense for most of the performance.

They all headed out of the auditorium in a single-file, all lost to their own thoughts as they walked down the corridor to the safe room. The dressing room was still untouched, the familiar cognition warp slowing their bodies for a second as they entered before the illusion settled.

“Now that we’re out of there, I’ll ask again,” Ryuji began, leaning against the table in the middle. “What the hell did we just see?”

“It seems to have been one of Akechi’s more recent memories,” Haru answered, thinking out loud. “He looked just a little younger than we know him, so perhaps this happened a few years ago.”

“So… he awakened to his power on his own. That must have been so scary to go through all by himself,” Ann remarked, downcast. “I mean, I had Joker, Skull and Mona with me when I awakened, and it was still scary, confusing and painful. I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like for him…”

“Hey, we can’t forget that Akechi is a murderer!” Futaba exclaimed, fists clenched tightly. “I get it, he was being manipulated, but… it doesn’t change the fact that he’s planning to kill our leader, nor that he, apparently, was the one causing the mental shutdowns! Heck, it would make sense for Noir's dad to have been killed by him, too!”

At that, Haru flinched, having been quiet about the obvious conclusion so far. She looked pained and pensive, and Akira's heart went out to her for still being willing to see the shades of grey in her father's killer. They paused to see if she had anything to say, but she simply glanced away, torn and quiet in her struggle. 

“I know, Oracle, we all know,” Makoto pacified her sadly, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Everything he's done is unforgivable. We don’t like him any more than you do, but… it’s hard to swallow the fact that he’s being used by adults to commit crimes on their behalf.”

“I believe that the man- Magnifico- intended on grooming Akechi from the very beginning in order to make him into a killer-for-hire,” Yusuke murmured. “How horrible to take advantage of a scared child like that… And once Akechi was under this man’s thumb, I don’t imagine it was very easy to get out.”

“Man…” Ryuji sighed, crossing his arms. “I don’t like the guy at all, but it’s a little hard not to feel sorry for him… He was being used by shitty adults all this time, too. Kinda like, well… us.”

“Akechi doesn’t want your pity,” Akira finally said, feeling like he should stand up for his rival at least a little. 

“Joker?”

“That man- Shido… There’s history between him and Akechi.” He left it at that for details, unwilling to expose too much of Akechi’s past without his consent. “Akechi’s childhood was terrible because of him, so I guess that he’s willing to do anything- to others, or even himself- in order to achieve his revenge. I’m not too sure what he hopes to accomplish by working for him, but Akechi’s determined on that end.” He let out a sigh, twisting a strand of hair in front of his face. “He may be swallowing his pride when playing the long game, but he’s still too proud to accept anyone feeling sorry for him.”

In a twisted sense, Akechi’s heart was probably one of the more resilient ones amongst them all, although his particular resilience being borne of trauma, unlike their own. 

“Joker, it’s admirable that you’re able to understand someone like him,” Morgana began, not sounding too approving, “but don’t forget; he’s our enemy. We can’t sympathize with him.”

“I’m not sympathizing with him,” Akira let out a frustrated noise, “nor is it as clear-cut as him being our enemy. You said it, too, Mona; I understand him. I don’t forgive him, I don’t agree with him, but I understand him. And as it seems, nobody’s ever done that for him in his entire life, so I’m not going to give him up, too.”

Perhaps he’d said too much, or perhaps something had given him away. All he felt at that moment was the weight of his teammates’ eyes on him, trying to decipher his angle, trying to understand. Perhaps if he was in their shoes, Akira would have stared at himself incredulously as well, but knowing what he knew about Akechi, he simply couldn’t. 

He was the one who spent time with Akechi after school, playing chess, talking, studying, avoiding fangirls. He was the one who took him out at night, neck-to-neck in darts or billiards, or face-to-face in the cover of dim lights at the jazz club. He was the one to whom Akechi had issued his desperate challenge, he was the one who held onto his glove in his pocket. 

Even if he wanted them to, he knew that his friends would not understand Akechi the way he did, ever.

“Alright, let’s not fight.” Ann eventually caved when the silence became a bit much, and Akira had to be grateful for her and her big trusting heart at this moment. “Joker probably knows something we don’t, so there’s no use arguing about this. We should just head back to the auditorium to catch the second half of the play.”

Almost as if on cue, the announcement chime went off through the intercom, and they all loosened up a little with something else to focus on. 

“Let’s head back,” Makoto agreed, tapping Futaba’s shoulder to get her to stand from her seat as well. 

Futaba did so, lips still pursed tightly together. 

“I’m just gonna say one thing here,” she said with an air of finality, her voice tight. “If I find out that he’s got something to do with mom’s death… I will never forgive him.”

Akira looked at her, tense and trembling as all the what-ifs ran through her genius mind like an algorithm, and couldn’t find it in his heart to tell her otherwise. She was like a little sister to him and he would always support her regardless of what path she chose for herself. It would be her right if it came down to it, but it would also be Akira’s right not to agree with her. 

“Let’s head out,” he simply said, turning around and exiting the safe room. 

\--- IV ---

Upon approaching the auditorium door again, Akira made a quick stop at the poster stand, noting that it had changed once again, with the new cast list for the second half of the play. 

“Hey, wait a minute…” Morgana gaped, expressing surprise on behalf of the entire vanguard. “Joker, you’re on this paper, too!”

**_ Adesso II_ **

**Arlecchino: Goro Akechi**

**Innamorati: Goro Akechi, Akira Kurusu**

**Colombina: Mother**

“What’s Akechi’s mother doing here again?” Haru asked, confused. “Isn’t she deceased? How could she be in a memory alongside you, Joker?”

“Not sure,” Akira admitted, biting his lip. “We’ll just have to find out.”

Silently, the Thieves headed into the theatre again, diligent in their work even when tensions were high. It didn’t feel right to feel at odds with the people he loved most, but Akira had always stood firm on his beliefs- and his faith in Akechi was one more thing he wouldn’t compromise on. 

As they entered, Akira noticed that the crowd had diminished. In fact, they were nearly alone in the auditorium this time, although the sense of loneliness was not as bad as the very first play that Akira watched by himself in the tiny, unkempt auditorium. When they all arrived at their earlier spot and took their seats next to one another, the lights began to dim again, and the curtain opened. 

The well-lit stage was empty at first, but soon enough, Akechi entered, now looking as they all knew him- eighteen years old, wearing his tan uniform, carrying his briefcase with the A printed on it. The mask that he wore was the one from the second memory; Arlecchino, bright gold with the pudgy nose. It was one that Akira didn’t remember too fondly, not having liked how it was essentially the fake public face he’d constructed for himself under duress. He wondered if it sat heavy on Akechi’s face. 

“They love me,” Arlecchino giggled, skipping across the stage. Next to Akira, Ryuji snickered. “The world loves me, they love me without even knowing me. This feeling… isn’t it incredible?”

Humming an upbeat tune, a jingle of some sort, Arlecchino made his way across the stage, twirling and jumping. He reminded Akira of a jester in this role, although perhaps that was the original intention of wearing this particular mask as his public face. 

“They say I’m smart,” Arlecchino continued giddily, “a genius, even… Who will tell them that I’ve faked my intelligence as well? Ah, but no one will, for no one knows.”

Skipping right to the edge of the stage, Arlecchino leaned over, pretending to scout into the nonexistent crowd. 

“You there!” he called out to the complete emptiness, waving with a polite smile on his face. “Would you like an autograph? And you!” Jumping over to another spot by the edge, he waved to another invisible crowd in the audience. “Would you like a picture?”

Finally, he skipped over to where they were sitting, leaning over the edge and making direct eye contact with Akira. 

Akechi’s eyes were gold.

“You there,” he called, perhaps slightly tamer in tone, more polite. “Tell me. What do you think of the Phantom Thieves?”

Ah, so he was referring to their original meeting in the TV studio. It made sense that Akira was in this memory, in that case. 

Before he had a chance to debate whether or not he was expected to answer, Arlecchino turned around, briefly giving his back to the audience as he retreated to the side again. 

“Intriguing” he said, perhaps losing some of his comedic extravagance. “Few people around me are so willing to speak their minds as freely as you did.” Placing his briefcase down, Arlecchino turned to look at Akira again. “Adults are only interested in using the young, while they simply do as the adults say.”

“Is he, uhh… talking about that trip at the TV station?” Ryuji whispered to Akira. “When you called him out for his shitty opinion on camera?”

“Yeah,” Akira nodded, leaving it at that so he could hang onto every word that came out of Akechi’s mouth. 

“I wonder why you feel so strongly about the Phantom Thieves and their justice,” Arlecchino continued. “If only you knew that there is no real justice in this world… Justice is subjective, and doled out by each individual according to their own principles. You and I, in that regard, are not so different.”

Stretching his left hand out towards Akira, Arlecchino smiled, placid and pleasant.

“Let’s talk again sometime,” he simply said, then snatched his own hand out of the air to twirl. 

When he stopped, he was no longer looking at Akira. 

“Oh, how we talked!” Arlecchino exclaimed, walking 8-figures on the stage as he mused. “Day and night, about this and that… You truly were fascinating, but before I’d realized it…” Halting at one end of the stage, Arlecchino spun around, glaring at the other end. “You had come too close…”

And, to everybody’s surprise, a double of Akira in his Shujin uniform stepped out onto the stage, unmasked, directly across from Arlecchino. Its eyes were gold, but all else was identical to Akira, who shuddered in his seat at the sheer uncanniness of the situation. 

“That’s like, super creepy,” Ann winced, getting visible goosebumps. 

Akira could only nod. 

“Why did you insist on spending so much time with me?” Arlecchino asked, frowning as the Akira double stepped forward towards him. “I don’t want you to see me for who I truly am.”

“I do,” the double said, his voice loud, clear, and firm. “I want you to show me someday.”

“Never!” Flinching like a wounded animal, Arlecchino’s entire demeanor became defensive. “Should my true self come to light, I will lose everything!”

“Not if you gain something in return,” the double assured him, sounding awfully confident in his own words. Akira didn’t know what to think of the scene, his heart hammering in his chest. “Let me in. The mask that you wear as your last bastion of defense- put it down, and let me take its place.”

“What the hell? Did you actually say that to him?” Ryuji looked at Akira incredulously, to which Akira could only shake his head, turning red. 

“N-No, it’s just a paraphrase, or a summary, or something,” he insisted, his voice feeling tight. 

“Asking me to lay down the weapons that have kept me alive all my life…” Arlecchino scoffed bitterly. “Only an idealistic fool like you would say something like that.”

“Your war is not wholly unlike mine,” the double insisted, taking another step. 

“What would you know?” Arlecchino spat, his face now twisted in anger and a bit of fear. “You and your perfect life… Your friends, family… you would never understand me!”

“I do understand!” Akira’s double said firmly, taking another step forward, now halfway through the stage towards Arlecchino. “And you know it, too. That is why you tell me things you can’t tell anyone else- in the bathhouse, the café, the club, Mementos.” Another step. Arlecchino looked like he was about to flee. “You said it yourself; I’m the only one who understands, but more than that, I’m the only one you want to understand you.”

The accusation fell heavy on both of them, especially when Arlecchino did not refute it. Instead, he glanced away, something guilty on his face. 

“Maybe so,” he murmured, his voice low and vulnerable. Akira’s double took another stride towards him. “But that was a mistake. A moment of weakness. When I find myself around you, I start to fantasize what life could have been like if I’d met someone like you a few years earlier. But that’s all they are- fantasies. I will never be free of this mask I’ve made for myself.”

“Just take it off, then.” It seemed like such a simple request, but the twist in Arlecchino’s expression proved that it wasn’t that easy. 

“I wish I could, but I don’t know….” He glanced at his feet, tapping his toes idly. “I can no longer make the distinction between who I am and the mask I wear. Where does my flesh end and where does the mask begin? I am too afraid to try.”

“You, afraid?” Akira’s double scoffed, stopping within a few feet of Arlecchino to stare him down. “What happened to your justice? What happened to your desire to climb to the top?”

“Don’t patronize me about that,” Arlecchino hissed, bristling again. “I’ve chosen my path to the top, and this is it. You and your pretty words are only in my way!”

“You don’t believe that,” the double challenged cockily, taking another step forward finally. “You know your path is the wrong one, and that is why we both know I will win in the end.”

“Shut up!” 

There was the sound of snapping leather, but where they all expected Akechi to have hit the double out of sheer rage, they only found him with a bare hand extended towards him. Akira’s double had his own hand up, and within it lay clutched a black leather glove. 

The same glove sat nestled in Akira’s pant pocket, weighing a hundred pounds now that he became aware of it again. 

“I hate you,” Arlecchino spat out, standing with his back straight and no longer cowering under the weight of his own insecurity. Akira’s double simply gave him a cocky smirk, pocketing the glove and taking the last step between them to stand face-to-face with him. “I’ve issued a challenge and I will not rest until I’ve bested you. You had better not lose to anyone else in the meantime.”

“I accept your challenge, then,” Akira’s double smugly said, gazing directly into Arlecchino’s eyes behind the mask. “And I look forward to its resolution.”

With that, the two of them went silent, sizing each other up with their eyes only. In such close proximity, there was no room for meaningless movement, so Akira even had his eyes on each rise and fall of their chests. 

“Holy shit the UST,” Futaba murmured to fill the silence that was becoming a bit awkward. “Is this a fanfic? Are we seeing a lemon right now?”

Before anyone could begin to question her incomprehensible terminology, Akira’s double put his hands up slowly, still staring into Arlecchino’s eyes as he pressed the backs of his palms to his cheekbones, and hooked his fingers delicately under the mask. 

“Holy shit, it is!” Futaba whispered furiously. 

“Ughhhh this is too awkward, I can’t watch this!” Ryuji groaned, hiding his face behind his hands. “Dude, this is some weird shit going on in Akechi’s heart!”

Akira didn’t even know what he could say, cheeks aflame and heart hammering, although he didn’t know what he felt. He only knew that he could not tear his eyes away. 

Slowly, gently, the double peeled Arlecchino’s mask off of his face, and his hair fell softly to cover his forehead. Still deliberately slow, the double put the mask down, until it hung far away from the brown-haired boy. Their eye contact did not cease. 

“I’ll hold onto this,” the Thief finally said, referring to the mask in his hand. “You’re better without it, anyway.”

“What, so I’ll have to get past you if I ever want to wear it again?” the Detective said mockingly, without much bite to his tone. 

“No,” Akira’s double shook his head, taking a step back to put some distance between them. “I’ll keep it so that you have no choice but to come to me first should you ever feel the urge to wear it again.” 

That, at the very least, had the Detective’s uncovered eyes going wide. Without turning his back on him, Akira’s double stepped toward the center of the stage, and the older boy had no choice but to follow, attracted like magnetism to his polar opposite.

They said nothing more to one another, Akira’s double halting in the center-stage, but as soon as the brown-haired boy reached him, he suddenly turned his back to the audience, Arlecchino’s mask cradled in his arms. 

For the remaining one of the two, it was as if he’d disappeared entirely. 

“Hah,” he laughed, incredulous and perhaps still a bit shocked by his words. Akira’s double remained motionless behind him. “Of course. He always needs to have the last word.” 

Pacing, the young man seemed to be considering his options, innocently lost like a child all over again. There was conflict in his unmasked expression, and Akira wondered if perhaps this was the vulnerability that Goro showed in front of him when they were alone. The look on his face made his heart flip in his chest. 

“I don’t know what to do anymore,” he admitted to himself in a whisper, stopping to bury his face in his hands as if missing the mask that was there only moments ago. 

As he turned his back to the right of the stage, from within the backstage emerged a woman that was familiar to Akira alone. 

“Whoa,” Morgana gasped, eyes widening in awe as the ethereal-looking woman in the long white dress nearly floated over to her son. Her long brown hair cascaded in curls over her shoulders, dark red eyes kind as she glanced at his turned back. Her bare feet made no noise when she advanced on the polished hardwood, stopping only minutely behind her son before leaning in and encircling his waist with her arms. 

“Oh, Innamorati,” she murmured softly, kissing the top of her son’s head. “What a cruel weight has been placed upon both of your shoulders.”

“What should I do now, then?” the boy asked, still not raising his face from his hands. “Impart me your wisdom, Colombina.”

“I have no wisdom, love,” the woman shook her head sadly. “The time has long gone where I could offer you advice, but what I can offer you now is simply my blessing.”

“Your blessing?” he chuckled incredulously once again, finally raising his head and glancing to the side to catch a view of her hair. “What good will that do me?”

“Peace of heart, perhaps,” Colombina hummed, placing her chin against her son’s hair. He had the same colour strands as her. “You’ve now realized that you belong to one whole alongside another half. For your existence to shift so drastically within such a short time, you must be feeling conflicted.”

“That’s an understatement.”

“Then if my memory can only help you resolve that conflict and put your heart at ease, it will have been enough for me.” Taking another moment to embrace her son, she finally stepped back, holding onto his arms loosely. “I will go now, but this is my final gift to you, for having betrayed you so long ago.”

“Why now?” the young man asked, voice tight. His fists clenched repeatedly, thrumming with anxiety.

“Because the Innamorati have finally fallen into one another’s hands, and as Colombina, it is my duty to help them in any way I can,” she said, and finally let go of her son. “Go now, unafraid. The path before you will be difficult, but you are no longer alone.”

As if sensing the note of finality, the young man whipped around, trying to see her one last time. 

“Wait, I’m so-” 

However, as if having seen the future, Colombina also quickly disappeared behind Akira’s double, leaving her son staring into midair.

“—rry….” he completed his sentence helplessly, the hand that had come up to touch his mother falling uselessly back at his side. As he processed his encounter, Colombina slipped out from her hiding spot and left the stage in floaty footsteps, leaving no trace of herself behind. 

This left the Innamorati alone on the stage together, silent. Akira’s double seemed frozen in time with his back to the audience and hunched over, and he seemed invisible to the boy left alone on stage. 

“No, I’m not alone,” he murmured to himself finally, turning to face the audience with his back against his other half’s. With his conclusion reached satisfactorily, he lifted his gaze to the sky, and let the light dance in his eyes. 

The actors stayed motionless as the curtain began to slide shut, and the lights began to turn on. 

There was a beat of silence, and then-

“What the hell was that just now!?” Ryuji screeched, jumping from his seat. “For real, some parts of that were just- ugh! So awkward!” 

“Oh my, I must only wonder what happened between you two after having seen this,” Haru mused out loud, really not helping the flush on Akira’s cheeks. If anything, she made it worse, and the redness of his face became even more apparent when the lights turned on entirely.

“I, for one, found this scene very inspiring,” Yusuke interjected, his voice swelling with passion like when he spoke of his art. “It was truly a raw depiction of Akechi’s innermost feelings in regards to Joker, a passionate and painful story of two halves that can never truly be whole.”

“Please don’t say it like that,” Akira begged, hiding his face in his hands and doubling over. 

“It was a pretty good play, though!” Ann pointed out. “Asides from the fact that it was totally about our leader becoming best friends with our sworn enemy.”

“I would like to paint the final scene, if it alright with you, Joker,” Yusuke said innocently, drawing another groan from Akira. “The lighting that illuminated Akechi while he hid your doppelganger in his shadow- a marvelous dichotomy of man that I cannot help but want to illustrate!”

“Holy crap,” Futaba cackled evilly, “I can’t believe the fanfic is getting fanart, too.”

“Okay, let’s all calm down,” Makoto settled them all as they started loudly discussing what they’d seen. Only Akira stayed silent in embarrassment, bent over in his seat. “Come on, we’ve still got a job to do.”

At that reminder, their voices died down, and Akira was glad for the call to order. He really could count on Makoto to save him time and time again, especially with his dignity on the line. Trying to reclaim his credibility as leader, he stood up as straight as he could, and turned his gaze towards the auditorium exit.

“So… where do we go from here?” Morgana asked, smug look still on his furry face. “Should we head to the next auditorium?”

“We’re getting a little tired, though,” Haru reminded him, glancing around their gauze-covered friends. “We should start considering our way out.”

“I can still go!” Ryuji assured them, although Akira knew he wasn’t the only one that had noticed him limping.

“Considering how limited we are in time to steal Akechi’s heart, it may be worth weighing the risks and benefits of pushing forward,” Yusuke added, although he, too, looked worse for wear. 

“How does everyone feel about that?” Akira asked, glad to step back into his comfort zone after the comically embarrassing episode they’d had.

“There’s only one auditorium left, right?” Makoto mused out loud, glancing around the team perched on the seats. “If we prioritize stealth in our advance, and avoid most of the Shadow encounters on the way, I think we should be alright. We should also keep our strength in reserve, just in case we encounter a stronger Shadow that stands in our way.”

“Sound advice, Queen,” Morgana nodded in satisfaction. “According to the map, we’re almost to the Treasure. As long as we stay out of fights, we can still press on!”

“Let’s keep going, then,” Akira nodded, mentally apologizing to his teammates for pushing them so hard. The more he saw of Akechi’s heart, though, the faster he wanted to change it for him.

With that call to action, the Thieves began to file out of the row, into the main alley so that they could exit in the back of the auditorium. As they began heading off, however, Akira suddenly felt eyes on his back, and whipped around, back towards the stage. 

It was still empty, the curtains still closed. 

Yet, from the corner of his third eye, something beckoned him towards it, calling out to every bone in his body like a siren song. 

“Joker?” Morgana asked, noticing that he wasn’t following. 

“Hmm?” Turning to answer him, Akira noted that he was the only one who’d noticed him spacing out. The others still walked off, trusting their leader to follow. 

“Is something wrong?” Morgana continued, looking back towards the stage. “Did you see something?”

Again, the same feeling called to him from behind the stage. Akira felt attracted towards it like a magnet. 

“I think there’s something valuable in the backstage,” he decided to say unclearly. “I’ll go get it.”

“I’ll come with you!” Morgana immediately offered, although Akira just shook his head. 

“No. Take the others to the entrance, Mona. I’ll join you in a second.” Once the order was given, Akira didn’t wait to see it acknowledged. He knew that Morgana trusted him, and he trusted Morgana, too. So, leaving that worry out of his mind, he set a brisk pace towards the stage. 

Without paying too much attention to the questioning calls of his name behind him, he climbed the stairs to the stage and disappeared behind the curtains. 

The backstage was empty, which left him oddly disappointed. Between discarded props scattered on the floor and technical equipment stacked in dusty corners, there was nothing of note to investigate. The feeling that had called him here had also disappeared, which left Akira to wonder what it had been in the first place. 

He stared at the dark floor and heavy curtains as if they held the answers, but when none of his surroundings replied, he turned to leave. 

As he spun around, he nearly slammed into a man, standing just behind him without ever having announced his presence. 

“Holy-” Heart jumping in his throat, Akira leapt back, dropping his weight low in battle stance out of sheer instinct. With the distance, he was able to get a better look at the newcomer, now able to realize that it was likely just another Akechi. 

Indeed, although the man wore a mask that obscured the entirety of his face, the wavy hair tumbling to brush his shoulders was a dead giveaway. He wore a simple outfit of black pants and a long-sleeved shirt that was striped black and white erratically. The mask on his face, however, was nothing like the masks of the actors on the stage so far- instead of enhancing physical features, it was flat, covering all of Akechi’s face with only holes to see through. The mask itself was split in half vertically, black and white parts separated by an undulating border, and only the crescent curve of its mouth contrasted brightly on its otherwise smooth surface- a white frown on the black side of the mask, and a black smile on the white side. 

“Hello, Joker,” the Akechi lookalike said, not making any suspicious movements. It had Akira relaxing just a little. 

“Akechi,” Akira greeted, not letting his guard down nonetheless. “Are you… Akechi’s Shadow? Or his cognitive version of himself?”

“Persona users cannot have Shadows,” the lookalike chuckled, his voice muffled slightly by the mask. “Shadows are subconscious existences, whilst cognitions are consciously created. I am something in between, and I am the keeper of this Palace.”

“I see.” So this was to be their enemy at the end of the day. “So, you’re part of him, too?”

“That’s right. I am just another part of him, like his cognitions and Personas are. I am called Janus- the gatekeeper between his warring identities.” Having introduced himself, the lookalike bowed his head lightly to Akira. “You, of all people, should understand what that means.”

“Are you saying that…” Akira wracked his brain, trying to make the connection. “… Goro isn’t a bad person after all?”

“Bad and good are both subjective,” Janus corrected mildly. “Objectively however, if my existence is anything to go by, he doesn’t truly believe the identity he’s created for himself. There are still subconscious parts of him that oppose his cognition, and thus he is at war with himself.”

“And what do you hope to achieve by telling me this?” Akira cut to the chase, nervous with all this information being presented. 

“Nothing at all,” Janus waved off his concern, as if Akechi by nature wasn’t someone who meant everything he said. “You are invading my Palace, so it is simply something more for you to know.”

“And why did you come now?” Akira asked. “I was alone in the first auditorium. Why didn’t you meet me then?”

“I am the gatekeeper of Goro’s warring identities,” Janus repeated. “As a child, his identity was straightforward, but my role began only in the memory that you witnessed now.”

“Which one…?” Akira frowned, although Janus didn’t respond, letting Akira think for himself. Trying to recall the details of the play they’d watched, Akira suddenly theorized that Goro’s identity wasn’t necessarily represented by the use of a mask, but also by the lack of one. 

He’d taken off his mask halfway through the second half. 

“Me,” he finally said, his voice catching in his throat. “He took off his mask when he met me.”

“Innamorati,” Janus nodded, confirming that Akira’s theory was correct. “Traditionally a pair of characters that exist around one another, unmasked in contrast to most other roles.”

“So I… said something to him that made his identity change?” Akira clarified, feeling his heart beat harshly inside his chest. He knew that he and Goro were close, he knew it with certainty, but he hadn’t realized the extent to which the two were connected. “I’m the reason he’s at war with himself?”

Janus said nothing in response, simply standing and watching Akira process the new information. The latter couldn’t even tell what his expression was underneath the mask, if this was a reveal that he was happy with, or not. Akira had the feeling that Goro would burst an aneurysm if he knew what conversations Akira was having about him inside his heart. 

“Let me ask you, then, the most important question,” Akira tried slowly, gauging the other boy’s movements. “Will you be helping me, or will you stand in my way?”

At that, Janus finally gave a reaction, laughing lightly as if it was something obvious. 

“Well…” he answered, still with a lilt of amusement to his voice. “That’s not for me to decide, is it?”

It wasn’t a straightforward answer at all, and in fact, left Akira with more questions still. However, before he could ask them, footsteps echoed through the stage’s wooden floor. 

“Joker! Joker, man, where are you?”

“Oh.” He’d almost forgotten that his team was waiting for him. Glancing apologetically at Janus, he turned back to answer Ryuji’s call. “I’m here.”

“There you are!” Stepping out from behind the curtains, Ryuji jogged to meet with Akira. “Man, what are you doing in the dark like this? We’ve been waiting for ages and totally got worried!”

“I’m fine,” Akira assured him, turning back to where Janus had been standing. He expected the emptiness that greeted him instead. “I just thought I sensed something, but it was nothing in the end.”

“That sucks.” Offering him a sympathetic smile, Ryuji clapped him on the back. “Well, let’s go back, then. Everyone else is waiting.”

“Yeah.” Taking Ryuji’s lead, Akira began to head off, although he did turn back once more to make sure that Janus had indeed disappeared. 

With so many thoughts weighing on his mind and so many conflicting emotions stirring in his chest, Akira began to wonder if he, too, was at war with himself. 

\--- V ---

The path to Auditorium Three was long, much longer than the other two since the team shifted their focus to sneaking over offense. It worked, for they avoided nearly all the Shadows patrolling the hallways, and only intentionally challenged the Shadow guarding Akechi’s second Will Seed. However, while avoiding most battles worked wonders for their strength, it decimated their stamina, so that by the time they reached the third safe room, most of them needed to sit down. 

“I’m beat,” Ryuji groaned, kicking his feet up on a vanity, knocking a few makeup products over. “All this sneaking took years off my life, I swear. I almost wish I could get my blood pumping again by beating up some of these bastards.”

“Tell me about it,” Ann groaned, fanning herself with one hand, and cleaning a large scratch on Haru’s arm with the other. “How much longer do we have to go?”

“Well, since this is the last auditorium, I’d say this is it,” Futaba answered, shamelessly lying prone on the table, tapping away at a small hologram in front of her. “On the map, there’s nothing much past the auditorium. There’s a hallway where we’ll probably find the third Will Seed, but asides from that, only the Treasure Room is left.”

“What about the large building you were talking about, Joker?” Haru asked, hissing when Ann swabbed too hard at her injury. From where he was lying spread eagle on the cool floor, Akira cracked an eye open. “Is that the Treasure Room?”

“Maybe.” He didn’t know any more than them, other than to remember the ominous warnings that the Shadow at the information booth had given them in regards to that building. “We’ll have to see.”

“Will we be alright…?” Yusuke said like an afterthought, munching on Jagariko snacks, perched on some stacked crates. 

“We have to push through,” Makoto encouraged them, even though she was in the middle of wrapping her knuckles, one of them aching after a particularly strong punch to a Shadow’s smug little face. “There is no point in turning back now, even if we are reaching our limit. We’re almost to the end.”

“Well, let’s go, then,” Morgana decided, leaning against a rack of dusty costumes. “Every second we spend in the cognitive world is going to sap our energy further, so we may as well keep going.”

“Right,” Akira nodded, grudgingly pushing himself up from the floor into a sitting position. “At least watching a play won’t take too much energy.”

“True.” Tucking the last stretch of bandages into her sleeve, Haru patted down her uniform and stood. “Alright, I’m ready to go.”

“Yeah, let’s get this over with!” Ann also stood, stretching her arms out loudly. 

As everyone split into their respective parties, Akira took the lead once again, unable to help but dread the next auditorium’s contents. Indeed, this was the auditorium that all the Shadows and guests were raving about, so it really must be a big production inside. Akira wondered what it could be about. 

As they exited the safe room and began to venture towards the auditorium entrance, Akira noticed that there were more and more cognitive guests outside the door. The memory displayed inside must have been one that many people had been witnesses of, Akira guessed, perhaps something to do with one of Akechi’s TV appearances. As they crept past them, Akira kept an ear out for the occasional gossip. 

“Truly a chilling production. A masterpiece of deception.”

“The buildup was incredible. Even though we could see it coming, the ending was still quite powerful.”

“Only a select few on this planet can pull off something like that… truly impressive.”

“He really is someone to admire…”

“Now I’m getting curious,” Ann murmured as they turned the corner to the auditorium entrance. The double doors at the end of the hallway were huge, the frame a bright gold and studded with large gems, and the doors themselves padded with purple velvet. It was the most extravagant they’d seen yet, following the crescendo trend of the auditoriums so far. 

“Let’s see what the poster here says,” Makoto suggested, pointing at the upright stand that was surrounded by groups of cognitive guests. Heeding her advice, Akira led them towards it, pushing past the crowd to be able to read it. 

**_ Dopo I_ **

**???: Akira Kurusu**

**Magnifico: Masayoshi Shido**

**Brighella: Goro Akechi**

“You’re in this one as well, Joker,” Yusuke pointed out, surprised. “I wonder what there is left to know about your relationship with Akechi.”

“Don’t,” Akira warned him with a sigh, glad that the more playful of the members weren’t in the vanguard right now. He didn’t need them teasing him about his supposed relationship with Akechi right now, again.

“Let’s head in,” Makoto encouraged, also seemingly tired of this conversation. 

Glad for the out, Akira walked towards the ticket gate, bypassing the small crowd in front of it. 

“Welcome,” the Shadow usher at the desk greeted them with a bow. “Are you here to see the play?”

“Yes, we are,” Akira nodded, eyeing the crowd. 

“I see,” the Shadow nodded, crossing its hands in front of him and bowing apologetically. “My sincerest apologies, but the play has already begun. I cannot permit you to enter while it is in progress.”

“Please, we promise we won’t make any noise,” Makoto tried bargaining. “We’ve really been looking forward to this.”

“I understand.” The Shadow bowed again, nearly mechanically. “However, there is simply no way I can let you through. You will have to wait for the next show.”

“Joker,” Yusuke whispered, leaning into Akira’s ear. “Should we engage it in combat?”

The mere suggestion made shivers run down Akira’s spine. There was something undeniably powerful about the Shadow, and especially considering how tired they were, it would be futile to challenge it. 

“No,” he decided, taking a step back. “We’ll wait. When will it be shown next?”

“Ah, that may be a while,” the Shadow said. “Likely, after this show, it will have to be moved to Auditorium Two to make place for new productions. In that case, it would be weeks before you could see it.”

“Damn it,” Ann sighed, crossing her arms, displeased. “Now what?”

“You are always welcome, however, to enter at the intermission,” the Shadow suggested lightly. “You will have missed the first part, but I would gladly brief you on what happens so that you may follow the second part.”

“If you kindly would, yes,” Makoto quickly agreed, perking up. “This play is titled ‘ _Dopo_ ’. What is it about?”

“Well, it is about the excellent subterfuge of Brighella, at the service of Magnifico, who eliminates all that stand in his master’s way,” the Shadow explained gleefully. “It is the story of a long game of deceit that ends in the death of the final obstacle between Magnifico and his ascent to power. At the end of the day, it is Brighella who ensures that all is well and in order for his master’s grand finale. Even through unscrupulous means, even if that means burning the bridges he’s made with everybody else. Brighella lives to serve.”

“Wait…” Makoto frowned, looking like she was deep in thought. “Joker, your name was on the sign… so could this play… actually be Akechi’s projection of how he’s going to murder you after we steal Sis’ heart?”

“No way!” Ann exclaimed, eyes wide. “If we had been able to see it, we totally could’ve outsmarted Akechi before he even got to Joker!”

“And the final obstacle,” Akira began, mouth dry as he addressed the Shadow again. “Does he… does he die at the end of it?”

“Oh, absolutely,” the Shadow said cheerfully. 

Almost as if on cue, a loud gunshot rang out from behind the double doors, making them jump at the sound of it. Akira especially nearly felt it, the sound itself piercing through his brain like a bullet. It left his heart racing with anxiety. 

As the gunshot dissipated, the sound of a crowd clapping and cheering rose instead, loud enough to be heard from the outside. 

“Ah, what a poignant ending,” the Shadow said, clearly oblivious to its guests’ distress. “The crowd goes wild every time. Inevitable, of course. Brighella lives to serve, and Magnifico will always rise on top.” 

Akira didn’t reply. There was nothing he could say. Instead, he swallowed heavily and stared at the doors until the cheers died down and the familiar chime rang out in the air through the intercom. 

“Fifteen-minute intermission.”

“Well, please do enjoy the second half of the play,” the Shadow wished them, the doors unlocking with an audible click. “The actors featured are Goro Akechi as Zanni, and Masayoshi Shido as Magnifico.”

“Thank you.” Without another word, Akira stepped forward, and grabbed the golden door handle. It was heavy, and the door even more so, as if hinting that beyond it awaited a sight that Akira would not want to see. 

He did, though. He wanted to see everything Akechi had to show him. 

Only then would he be able to save him. 

They entered the auditorium, and Akira was instantly blown away by how large and extravagant it was in its sleek modern design. It looked like a theatre fit for the national orchestra, or sensational international productions. Even from the balcony from which they had entered, Akira could see the massive black stage, closed off by a heavy burgundy curtain. The walls were made of smooth, shiny ebony tiles, and the seats were plush red, bright spotlights hanging from the ceiling shining their lights upon the entire auditorium. The seating was arranged in a curved fashion in relation to the stage, with an entire mezzanine sprawled out below and a third balcony on top of their heads, dozens of rows in each section filled with hundreds and thousands of faceless guests. 

It was an impressive sight, to say the least. 

“Hey.” 

Akira was perhaps too busy admiring the auditorium with his mouth parted in awe to realize that the reserve team had caught up to them, Ryuji sauntering over to his side first. 

“Pretty damn flashy, huh?” he laughed, looking around him. “This is crazy, this place is huge!”

“So… many… people…” Futaba sounded a bit sick, hiding behind Makoto to avoid looking at all the people around her. At the very least, none of them were aware enough of their presence to look towards her. 

“I wonder what play we’ll be seeing here,” Haru said. “Especially since we don’t know what happened in the first part.”

“I’ll tell you what we got out of the Shadow at the ticket counter,” Ann volunteered, and while she briefed the reserve team about the likelihood of the first part having been about Akira’s murder, the man himself continued to glance around the auditorium. 

There was something uncanny about it, in all its brand new, beautiful glory. Somehow, the walls seemed more oppressive than before, and the room itself felt more claustrophobic than the very first dingy auditorium Akira had visited by himself. That auditorium, in all its unkemptness, had something genuine about it, something raw. This place, however, seemed embellished for the sole reason of detracting attention from elsewhere. He really worried about what they were about to watch. 

“Let’s go find some seats,” Morgana suggested once Ann was done with her briefing. “This place looks packed to the gills, so I don’t know how lucky we’ll get, though…”

“Let us look around,” Yusuke said, already looking around, albeit with his fingers up in front of his face to create a frame through which he studied the proportions of the beautiful theatre. 

No luck, however. The seats were completely full with cognitive guests, and Akira didn’t want to risk disturbing anything by interacting too much with them, so in the end, they all just leaned on the railing looming over the mezzanine. It reminded Akira of their old hideout at the accessway. 

As they struck up idle conversation to pass the time, the chime rang out once more, announcing the end of the last intermission. Akira’s heart skipped a beat as the lights began to dim, unsure what to expect of the very last play they were to see. The conclusion to all this. 

What would happen after he was dead and gone. 

The curtain raised off the ground dramatically as the lights dimmed to none, all spots turning to the stage instead. As it was revealed, so were the actors, now placed in a scene decorated with props. 

The scene on the stage was that of an office, not extraordinary by any means and therefore contrasting sharply with the actors, both of whom wore their masks. 

Magnifico, in his austere dirty-gold mask, was sitting at the desk, towering over Zanni, who was on his knees in front of the desk, head bowed. The long, pointy nose of Zanni’s mask nearly brushed the floor as he crouched, back bent and lowered in submission to his master. 

As the curtain reached the very top, the play began. 

“And as such, I’ve won,” Magnifico began, eyes on a newspaper in front of him. At his feet, Zanni did not move, barely even breathed. “In the end, no matter how strongly they opposed me, nobody could stop me from ascending to my rightful power. From now on, the country shall live a new age of peace and prosperity.”

Getting up from his seat, Magnifico walked off, standing with his back to Zanni and his profile to the crowd, accentuating the crooked nose on his mask. He looked intimidating, even in his calmness. 

“With myself at its helm, Japan will set sail onto new horizons, its people free from the burden of having to think for themselves.” An ugly grin stretched across his face. “Isn’t that right, Zanni?”

Finally having been addressed, Zanni’s head rose so that he could look towards his master. 

“Of course, Sir.” He sounded oddly solemn for someone who had supposedly been on the winning side. 

“People make poor choices when left to think for themselves. Now with someone like me as their leader to think for them, they’ll be able to live happy lives. And should anyone oppose me again, I will crush them once more. Isn’t that right, Zanni?”

“Yes, Sir. Of course.” Again, there wasn’t an inch of glee to the servant’s voice. It made chills dance on Akira’s spine, to see the usually-energetic servant so quiet. 

Magnifico seemed to notice it as well. 

“Well, I don’t see you behaving pathetically, groveling like you always do at my feet,” he called out, circling the desk to come closer to the boy kneeling in front of him. They locked gazes, and Magnifico snorted a derisive laugh. “And you’re even looking me in the eye now! I suppose the ascent to power has gotten to your head.”

Nudging Zanni with his foot, he clearly didn’t notice the servant clenching his jaw, even though Akira noticed it from so far away. 

“Although it is true that none of this would’ve been possible without your powers at my disposal, don’t get any ideas, understood?” Magnifico said mockingly. “No matter how the masses laud and love you, in here you are inferior. You will always be my servant, always at my feet. Is that clear?”

“Of course, Sir.”

Knowing that this play was simply a distortion of Akechi’s existing cognition made Akira feel sick. He didn’t want to imagine that someone out there really was treating his friend like this, let alone it be his long-lost father. Akira could perhaps begin to understand Akechi’s frustration when he saw something like this- he couldn’t imagine what it was like for Akechi, who actually lived it. 

“Now that we’ve made that clear, I suppose it is time for your reward,” Magnifico finally decided, perhaps feeling forgiving. “You’ve done the work I assigned you, and you eliminated all of my opposition without fail. For such diligent and ruthless work, I commend you.”

Zanni said nothing, still glaring at Magnifico as the man paced around the office. 

“As promised, I will now offer you all that you have desired,” he continued, turning his back to Zanni again to walk off to the side. “Money, I can offer you in bags, endlessly for as long as you live. And fame, well… I’ll arrange that you are visited by just the right people to ensure your name goes down in history. Does that sound like our arrangement fulfilled?”

“Yes.”

Finally getting off his knees, Zanni stood up jerkily, once again moving as if he was only a puppet on strings. His head tilted side to side as if his neck was too weak to hold up the weight of the mask, shoulders locking repeatedly as if he was using his arms to propel his entire body weight forward instead of using his legs. 

“All I’ve ever wanted... was to see you rise to the top,” he continued, standing up entirely before taking a few shaky steps towards Magnifico. 

“Good.” A sinister grin split Magnifico’s face from where he stood with his back turned, arms crossed behind himself, seemingly glancing out of the window into the city below him with his crooked nose casting his condescending gaze down on the masses he now owned. “As it should be. Your loyalty has been instrumental to my ascent to power.”

“Loyalty,” Zanni repeated, almost as if parroting rather than formulating his own thoughts. There was something very uncanny about the way he behaved, like an automaton given life when he stumbled a few more steps. “I’ve been… endlessly loyal to you. Lied for you. Killed for you. Murdered… murdered important people for you. All for loyalty.”

Magnifico let out a pleased hum. Behind him, Zanni stopped his advance with only a couple feet between them. His fingers drummed in thin air, as if they itched. 

“Loyalty… Only to see you get here…” Zanni’s voice was barely audible in the dead silence of the auditorium. Akira realized he was holding his breath, feeling the tension of the scene in front of him. A quick glance at his friends next to him proved that they, too, were not immune to the sheer pressure in the air between Zanni and Magnifico at this moment. 

A breath, then two. Zanni sighed it out, and put his hand to his waist. 

The sound of screeching metal ripped through the silence and it was with a squelch and a dull thud that Zanni buried a dagger to the hilt in between Magnifico’s shoulder blades. 

Akira’s breath flew out of his body alongside Magnifico’s.

“And now that you’re here… I will tear you apart, and watch you fall from grace from the highest you’ve ever been in your miserable, pathetic life.” Zanni’s low voice was vitriol, so much hate and anger festering and bubbling like the blood that gushed from Magnifico’s back when he roughly removed the blade. 

“Zanni!” Realizing too late that his associate had stabbed him in the back, Magnifico stumbled forward, catching himself on his knees and turning to face the younger boy. His blood stained the spotless waxed floor in splotches of vibrant red. “How dare you! After all I’ve done for you, how dare you betray me!”

“Betray you?” Zanni laughed, high and deranged. He took a step forward towards Magnifico’s bowed form, bloody dagger clutched tightly in his left hand. “I was never loyal to you in the first place. You played your game, and I played mine, a game of deceit of which I am the victor.”

“You’ll die for this!” Magnifico roared, launching himself at his traitorous servant with the intention of fighting back and mowing down yet another obstacle. 

However, despite Magnifico physically towering over Zanni, he was unable to grab him, Zanni using his trademark agility to bounce on the balls of his feet and saunter out of the way, avoiding the assault. As Magnifico closed in on thin air, Zanni rushed forward again. 

Right hand closed upon Magnifico’s collar, Zanni pulled him forward and slid the knife into his chest, nestled comfortably against his beating heart. 

“I’ve dreamed of this,” Zanni admitted, watching as Magnifico gasped and choked in pain, hands shakily trying to close upon the dagger. “Ever since the day Mother died… I’ve dreamt of destroying you… Death being far too kind, I’ve dreamt of tearing you apart, stripping you of your pride and your achievements and watching the life drain slowly from your eyes, realization setting in as you die at my hand.” Merciless, Zanni slid the dagger out, and then slammed it back into Magnifico’s chest once more, dragging a cry of pain from his father. Blood spurted from the other wound, covering Zanni’s sleeves. 

“Y-You a… are…” Blood dripped onto Magnifico’s lips, painting them red before rolling down his chin. His sentence was interrupted by a violent cough that sprayed blood all across Zanni’s body. 

To that, Zanni just laughed, and stabbed Magnifico again. The scene was blurry in front of Akira’s eyes, and he realized he was tearing up at the display of violence, not necessarily for the victim, but perhaps out of empathy with the murderer. For finally seeing how far he had been pushed, how badly he had been hurt, and how extensively he had broken.

“This is what you deserve!” Zanni cackled, stabbing him once more before Magnifico’s knees gave in, sending them both tumbling to the ground. Magnifico hit the ground like dead weight, and Zanni was on top of him immediately, right hand still pulling him from his bloodstained collar and left hand repeatedly burying the knife in his chest. “This is what you’ve made me into! You! This is all your fault!”

Past the point of replying, Magnifico simply watched, taking gurgling, rattling breaths, drowning in his own blood as Zanni cruelly stabbed him well past lethality. His limp body only jerked under the knife, head lolling and no longer reacting to his murderer’s hateful words. 

Akira couldn’t tear his eyes away from the bloody scene, nauseous and horrified, knuckles gripping the bannister tightly. He could hear the other Thieves murmuring next to him but he couldn’t hear them- his eyes and ears only for Akechi’s cry for help that came much too late. This was how it would end if nobody saved him. And perhaps to Akechi, it would be the ending he desired, but Akira could not let his friend put himself through this. 

Goro was already a killer, and Akira refused to let him become a murderer.

“I hate you! I hate you for destroying my life!” Zanni screamed, getting more and more emotional with each drop of blood that left his father’s body to pool on the ground under his knees. “I lost everything because of you! Everything! Everyone I’ve ever loved is gone, and it’s you!” One more stab, and then one more. It was difficult to tell from the amount of blood drenching Zanni’s face, but from the tremor in his voice, Akira could tell that he was crying. “It’s all you! It’s all your fault! You took everything from me! Everything!”

Magnifico was very obviously deceased, but that did not seem to deter Zanni. Letting out another heartfelt cry of rage, he dropped the dead body and grabbed the dagger with both hands, raising it high above his head, back curved, chest out, arms stretched taut, like holding out the crown for a king at his coronation. 

“Enough!” he cried out to all that haunted him, and put his entire body behind the stab that drove the blade right through Magnifico’s still heart. 

Hunched over, dripping with blood that was not his own, hands on the blade that murdered his own father, Zanni breathed. His breaths left his body heaving, as if he was having trouble staying standing under the weight on his young, broken existence. There was only static in Akira’s ears as he watched tearfully how Zanni’s body struggled with the realization of what he’d done. 

Finally, Zanni took his hands off the blood-slicked dagger, leaving it buried in its rightful place. His arms fell to the side briefly before he began to stand on his shaky knees, putting a trembling hand out to take the mask off of Magnifico’s face. 

Rising to a stand with his back straight and head held high, servant’s mask on his face and master’s mask in his hand, Zanni stepped over the body at his feet, and took a few steps towards the audience, tracking blood as he moved. Silent, trembling, he slowly put Magnifico’s mask up into the light, letting it reflect off the fresh blood stains streaked across it. 

“They say that when Magnifico dies,” Zanni murmured, voice raspy and broken with emotion, “another Magnifico immediately appears to replace him.”

With his other hand, he slowly gripped the pointy-nosed mask and pulled it away from his face. Zanni’s mask clattered to the floor as the young man turned Magnifico’s mask in his hand, reverently, hesitatingly placing it on his face. 

When his hands dropped, the young man wore the mask with the austere traits, crooked nose turned up and looking down condescendingly at everybody around him. Somehow, though, the same feeling was not mirrored in his body. 

Somehow, as the weight of the mask settled on his body, the boy’s trembling got worse, until his shoulders were visibly shaking as well, breath hitching and sniffling. Akira’s heart broke for him, watching the realization of his loneliness descend upon his shoulders, watching the pointlessness of his life wrap itself around him. 

The first sob escaped him like it had been building up since his very first breath in life, harsh, heavy, raw. Then, the second, and the third, his voice uncontrollable, swelling like the crescendo of an orchestra playing its final song. Realizing the futility of it all, the young man put his hands back up to his face, hooked his fingers into the Magnifico mask and tore, flinging the mask as far as away from himself as he could with a sob that escalated into a cry. 

And from that cry it escalated further, the young man now unmasked and unguarded taking deep breaths only to cry them back out. His chest heaved with the pain that was trying to burst from inside him, pushing against his chest and rushing out to fill the vacuum left when all the rage had left his body. 

This was sorrow, now. At the end of it all, when the boy had no more rage, he still had sorrow, and it was what would break him. 

He cried. He cried, loud, lonely, tears washing blood off his face and dripping to stain the ground below his bloodied feet. His voice shook as it reverberated across the auditorium, bouncing off the walls, over their heads, harsh and genuine, the only truth amongst all his deceit. 

And just when Akira thought that they had reached the peak, the young man on stage fell to his knees, and turned to the skies to wail his sorrow at the heavens. 

Raw, shattered, heartbroken, alone, Goro Akechi crumpled amongst the carnage that he’d paid for with his entire life, and he wailed with nothing left to gain nor to lose. 

Around Akira, the crowd began to clap, standing to cheer and whistle in the grandest standing ovation for the young boy lying broken on the stage. Amongst the cheers, amongst the praise, Goro continued to wail, for this was what he’d always wanted, what he’d lost everything to gain. 

And he wailed over the crowd cheering for his success, realizing that he’d also deceived himself, realizing that he was truly alone in his unhappiness in the end. 

He wailed, crying for help, crying for forgiveness, and the crowd swallowed up the genuine display with their ovation for his deceit. 

Akira felt nausea rising in his throat, and even before the curtain began to fall, he had turned on his heel, jogging out of the auditorium as fast as he possibly could. 

Behind him, Goro continued to cry, and nobody answered him. 

\--- VI ---

They didn’t speak about the last play they saw. Perhaps it was only out of respect for Akira, who had vomited twice in the safe room upon their hasty retreat, or perhaps there really wasn’t anything to say, but they all kept eerily quiet, pretending not to see their leader hunched over on the chair in the corner while Ann rubbed his back soothingly. 

It had been gruesome, and heartbreaking to watch, even for those of them who didn’t know what Akira knew about Akechi. At the end of the day, this could only mean that Akechi knew that he was on the path to self-destruction, but that he didn’t know or intend to step off of it. For someone who, in a better life, could’ve been their friend, the Phantom Thieves as a whole couldn’t help but feel sorrow. 

Eventually, the nausea subsided, and the tears that Akira wanted to cry dried out. He was simply tired at that point, emotionally exhausted to the bone and wishing he could simply call it off and go home. 

He couldn’t let his team down however, since they’d already come so far. 

He couldn’t let Goro down, since having witnessed what he had. 

“Let’s move on,” he finally croaked out, appreciating that nobody even thought of making fun of him. He was grateful for them, really, because he knew they didn’t like Goro Akechi, and even having seen the inside of his heart, he wasn’t sure they ever would. However, they loved him, and they respected his grief like their own. 

He would always be grateful to them for that. 

They followed him silently, but diligently as ever, leaving the jam-packed hallways surrounding Auditorium Three and heading off into the next corridor. Thankfully, Futaba called ahead that the coast was clear, and that there were no Shadow readings anywhere nearby.

The noise quieted as they put distance between themselves and the auditorium, until only their footsteps remained. Twisting into a few service corridors led them to the final Will Seed, which Akira perhaps cradled in his hands a little too long, listening half-heartedly to the heinous whispers of hate and resentment as the Seeds combined to become the Crystal of Deceit. 

With that final object in hand, and a little more stamina in their bodies, Akira led them out, and into the final stretch. 

The last corridor on the map was a long one, straight, and unadorned. It really seemed like it was added at a different time from the rest, connecting the two parts of the building almost like an afterthought. The flooring in the corridor was tile, and the walls were a stark white, not a single object to take cover behind, but also no Shadows to hide from. With that certainty, Akira simply took his time, strolling out in the open towards the other end of the hallway. 

Although it seemed to stretch on forever due to their fatigue, Akira could see the end of the corridor just ahead. Guarding it was yet another powerful Shadow wearing an usher’s uniform, placidly waiting for his guests. 

“Hello,” Akira greeted as they approached, jumping straight to business. “Can we pass through here?”

“May I have your names?” the Shadow asked in return. 

“Why this, all of a sudden?” Haru asked. “Do we need tickets to get past here?”

“Unfortunately, dear guests, this auditorium is only accessible by guestlist,” the Shadow explained politely. “The owner of the theatre makes this guest list, and only those who are accepted by the owner can enter to see the plays shown here. So, I ask again. May I have your names?”

“Try your name, Joker,” Futaba suggested in Akira’s ear, monitoring the conversation from further away. “Akechi kinda likes you, I think, so he might let you in.”

“My name is Joker,” Akira answered, figuring that since Akechi knew his identity, any one of his names would work. 

“Unfortunately, you’re not on the guestlist,” the Shadow said, glancing down at its papers. “I will therefore ask you to leave.”

“Man, I bet Akechi don’t got nobody on that guestlist anyway!” Ryuji complained, glaring at the Shadow as if it was at fault. “It’s a scam!”

“What should we do, Joker?” Makoto asked, turning to their leader once more for answers. “We’re in no shape to fight it. Should we retreat?”

“The Treasure’s just up ahead, though,” Futaba spoke up in their ears, crackling with static noise. “I’m mapping out the area in close range and it seems to be a really large open area, with the Treasure in the middle. It’s literally just past here.”

“If access requires Akechi to acknowledge you as part of his guestlist, then perhaps that is something that can be done in the real world?” Haru mused out loud. “Perhaps even sending the calling card will be enough for him to believe you have access to the Treasure, and therefore are on his guestlist.”

“And worse comes to worst, if we get back here during the heist and this guy don’t let us through, we’ll just bust through him since we’ll be fresh and ready to go!” Ryuji grinned brightly, having it all figured out. 

“So, Joker?” Makoto asked once more, to be sure. “Do we consider our route to the Treasure secured? And should we retreat for today?”

There wasn’t much else they could do, and truthfully, Akira needed to get away from Akechi’s demons for a while. The thought of a retreat sounded tempting. 

“Yes,” he decided, making sure that Futaba was listening as well. “Our route to the Treasure is secure. Let’s return to the real world for today.”

Ryuji whooped a cheer to punctuate the announcement, and that, at the very least, brought a small smile to Akira’s tired face as they began to head back. 

As they reached the Palace’s exit point after their hasty retreat, Akira reveled in the tarry sensation of exiting the Metaverse, glad to be leaving the Theatre of Deceit behind for a while, just long enough to breathe. If he had become overwhelmed simply by watching Goro’s memories, he couldn’t imagine what the boy himself was feeling. 

He supposed, in some weird, messed up manner, that he now understood how Goro had gotten to where he was, and why he wanted to do what he did. 

\--- VII ---

Morgana was fast asleep in his bag by the time Akira reached Leblanc, which made Akira a little jealous. Dusk had only just begun descending upon them, as time flowed differently in the Metaverse and in the real world, so that when he turned into the backstreets, the warm light of the café entrance welcomed him home. 

He entered the store without a second thought, only dreaming of his bed at this point. 

“Welcome home, honey,” a playful voice said as he stepped in, the door chime clinking cheerfully. Akira looked up to the counter to see the object of his current sorrow sitting on a high chair, a half-full cup of coffee cooling in front of him. His greeting had clearly been a parallel to the last time they’d met like this, a light and airy joke that certainly didn’t reflect the turmoil in his heart. 

He looked happy, his face bright and carefree as he anticipated Akira returning his quip, as if nothing else mattered in the world. 

Akira couldn’t ruin it for him. 

“Thanks for waiting up,” he returned, noting that his voice was a bit weak. Probably the fatigue. Akechi seemed to notice it, too. 

“Huh, are you alright?” he asked, eyes wide with worry. Even though Akira knew it was an act, he appreciated the concern. “You look exhausted.”

“Ryuji had us run laps in Inokashira park today, and that bit with the hills was really bad,” he improvised, not too worried about pulling it off. “I’m going to feel it tomorrow for sure.”

“Oh, I know what you mean,” Akechi nodded sagely, sipping at his coffee. “I like to bike around there sometimes, and those hills really do a number on your legs.”

And Akira was hit with one more reminder that Goro Akechi was human, like him. He was a teenager, a high school boy with hobbies, who attended cram school, and who forgot to eat food when he got busy with his work. He was a young man troubled by the trauma of his childhood and constant abuse and neglect as he grew up, gone mad with the power and responsibility placed on his immature shoulders without guidance, lost and hurting. 

He was smiling at Akira and hoping for a response, when Akira had just seen him wailing his heartbreak to the heavens and pleading not to be left alone anymore. 

He felt nauseous again. 

“How far did Ryuji push you?” It was Akechi’s turn to look concerned, sliding off his stool to step towards Akira. “You’re pale all of a sudden. Do you need me to accompany you to a physician? I hear you have a respectable one around these parts.”

“I’m fine,” Akira assured him, needing to get away. “I think I’m just gonna hit the hay early.”

“A fine plan,” Akechi agreed, backing off. “Well, Sakura has gone out for groceries, but when he returns I’ll let him know of your safe arrival home.”

“Thanks.” Nodding to him briefly, Akira walked off towards the back of the café, intending on disappearing, although something stopped him at the first step. 

“Did you forget something?” Akechi asked pleasantly, watching him from his spot at the counter. 

“No.” He chewed on his lip for a moment, debating his next move. Finally, he decided to say something, feeling uncomfortable with letting Akechi go like this. “Hey. By the way. Just wanted to let you know that… you can lean on me any time. For whatever you need.” He felt Akechi’s eyes boring holes into him, and figured he’d said enough. “That’s all.”

“Well, the same can be said for you. You can count on me as well, Kurusu,” Akechi said, although he did sound cautious. “Good night.” 

As Akira climbed the stairs up to his room, he felt the lingering weight of Akechi’s suspicious gaze trailing behind on his back. If Morgana was awake, he probably would have chastised him for giving himself away and drawing Akechi’s attention.

But more than anything right now, Akira would give his kingdom for Akechi to know that someone cared about him. 

His body heavy and his conscience even heavier, Akira fell into bed and was asleep even before his head touched the pillow. He didn’t dream, for there was no use dreaming if he wasn’t sharing his dream with those that mattered most. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote Akechi's Palace as based off of _Commedia dell'Arte_ , the early form of professional Italian theatre. The skits of Commedia always incorporated archetype characters that wore the same masks as to make themselves recognizable to the crowd, which is the motif I used in Akechi's memories. Some actors were traditionally unmasked, too. Basically, the "plays" were some of Akechi's cognitive creations, dramatized retellings of memories or projections of future events. Since this is purely subjective from Akechi's POV, some of the play contents may not be totally faithful to what we know happens in the canon. 
> 
> Oh, and the names of the plays are just Italian for: "Before, Now, After". It's not that deep lmao. 
> 
> The characters of Commedia used here are:  
>  **\- Zanni:** peasant servant, came to the city to look for work, wants to please. Erratic, energetic, acrobatic, a fool. His mask is traditionally a long-nosed one, so I kept Akechi's hero mask for it, meaning that Akechi's vision of himself playing hero with the PThieves is as Shido's servant.  
>  **\- Pantalone:** Old, crooked, greedy man. In the plays, these are the johns that paid for Goro's mother and who taught him from early on that people only exist to be taken advantage of by greedier, more powerful people. One of the johns pushed Goro's mother to commit suicide, ultimately.  
>  **\- Il Dottore:** Parallel to Pantalone, they are old men who believe themselves to be wise and learned, but who actually know nothing at all. In the plays, these were all of Akechi's foster parents, who patronized him with their "wisdom" instead of raising him, which made him realize that he would never be loved as he was, and therefore pushed him into creating the public persona; Arlecchino.  
>  **\- Arlecchino:** Harlequin. Young valet, comic relief, flexible and amoral when it comes to reaching his goals. This is Akechi's public persona, the one he shows on TV and to most people around him as the Detective Prince.  
>  **\- Colombina:** Mischievous maidservant, very intelligent and oftentimes aids the Innamorati. She is an unmasked character. This is Goro's mom, being taken advantage of but still continuing to love and support her son, mistreated and overlooked but remaining quick-witted.  
>  **\- Brighella:** Unscrupulous servant to Magnifico, scheming, violent trickster. He serves his master with glee; there can be no obstacles in his master's way. This is Akechi the murderer, the one who goes against all of his own needs and wants and principles in order to perform Shido's dirty work.  
>  **\- Innamorati:** Young lovers, usually the main focus of the play as they fight against adversity to get together in the end. Unmasked characters. In this fic, I didn't intend on writing romantic ShuAke (although it can be read as such if you want), but they do share an irreplaceable platonic bond, two halves of a whole. They cannot exist one without the other.  
>  **\- Magnifico:** the head of the city, the master of all, the most powerful man on stage. Condescending, looks down upon all. This is Shido. Enough said.  
> Info/acting of Commedia characters can be found on [this great video by the National Theatre. ](https://youtu.be/h_0TAXWt8hY) It's a short video that will def help you guys bring the characters in this fic to life! If you want more resources on discovering Commedia characters, just ask; I've got a ton of them saved. 
> 
> Most of the gimmicks of Akechi's Palace are based off of the 3rd semester Palace in Royal. Since [redacted] is their own Palace's boss, I couldn't figure out what to do with Akechi, and therefore created Janus; a facet of Akechi that is created subconsciously but developed consciously. Janus basically protects Goro's multiple identities from melding, which means that he's basically perpetuating the war between Goro's true self and the masked selves he presents to the world around him. It's a coping mechanism, but also a barrier to Goro being genuine with himself. Janus is the Roman god of beginnings and transitions, a two-faced god (hence the Thalia/Melpomene theatre mask he wears) that presides over passages, gates and transitions.
> 
> Next chapter; the heist!! But it's really not that straightforward, not with Akira having seen Goro's heart and now irrefutably attached to him as his other half :^) Good times, lots of drama and lots of action incoming in the next part. I'm not totally done, so it might be a few more days, but please stay tuned, I promise it'll be good!!
> 
> In the meantime, please come talk to me about how you felt about Akechi's Palace! I know it's been already done a lot, so I'm hoping i can bring at least a little creativity to the trope with the use of Commedia characters. Your feedback means the world to me, thank you so much for your support and I look forward to sharing the next chapter with you guys too (:


	3. Act III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Human life is truly the most tragic comedy, a grand play made to entertain as its characters inevitably fall into ruin. Yet it only takes a Trickster- or perhaps two- to challenge the script and write a new ending, this time free from tragedy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm super excited by how well received this is, thank you so much to everybody who's supporting this fic! It has come to my attention over the past few days that probably 30 other fics exist with this exact same premise, and yet you guys still gave this one a chance, for which I'm really, really grateful ;; I really hope I'll be able to catch you off guard and contribute some novelty to the fandom nonetheless! 
> 
> Here is is: the final act! I finished writing this early in the day, so I had time and patience to make a little visual piece to accompany it. Writing cursive on an old-ass Bamboo tablet is really hard, turns out. My handwriting is shaky as hell, but oh well. It's fine. 
> 
> Once again, feel free to use the search function to skip between scenes. This chapter is 28k long, and scene 10 to itself is about 11k, so you... might wanna buckle down for it lmao. 
> 
> Also! If you're a fan of listening to music while you read, I very highly recommend listening to the [P5R OST titled "Prison Labor"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfkSe919zA4) when reading the boss fight. I linked it for you. It fits so well with the vibe I wanted the battle to have, it's fantastic. Just a heads up. You'll see the fight coming, nw. 
> 
> Okay, that's it!! Please enjoy the final act!!

_“_ _Last scene of all,_

_That ends this strange eventful history,_

_Is second childishness and mere oblivion,_

_Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”_

_William Shakespeare, As You Like it, Act II, Scene VII, lines 163-166._

\--- I ---

The timing of the calling card was, as always, left up to Akira. They had to consider Sae Niijima’s deadline as well, so it couldn’t be any later than two days before her calling card, set to be sent on November 18th. That left Akira with the measly wiggle room of a few days to decide when to launch the attack on Akechi’s Palace.

It wasn’t as easy as simply sending a calling card, however. This time around, as Akira sat at his desk to draft the calling card, his mind drew blanks. Outside, it rained lightly, a mist in the afternoon sky more than anything else, Akira’s hair curling with the humidity. He twirled his pen in his hands over and over again, trying to consider the words that would have the most impact on Akechi.

The calling card would have to be bold and disturbing, enough to shake Akechi’s core and cause him to be genuinely afraid for his Treasure. Him being familiar with the Metaverse didn’t help, for he probably wouldn’t feel as threatened as all their other targets before him, since he knew what they would be doing the very moment Akira handed him the calling card. There were simply no words that came to him when he tried to think of how they’d declare war on Akechi.

Declaring war, in the end, was what the Phantom Thieves intended to do. Whenever they sent their calling cards, it came down to the final battle, one side to emerge victorious and the other one to fall from grace. Akechi was already at war with himself; it didn’t feel like a very good idea to declare war on him from the outside as well.

“Stuck?” Morgana asked, hopping onto the windowsill to enjoy the misty breeze flying into the room, watching Akira fiddle with his pen. 

“Yeah,” Akira admitted, putting his pen down with a sigh. In front of him, his notebook page was filled with discarded brainstorm ideas and scratched out sentences. “I don’t know what to say to him.”

“Just tell him as it is,” Morgana suggested, curling his paws in to sit like a loaf. “Akechi will probably appreciate you being straightforward about it.”

“Hmm.” There was some ingenuine about simply giving Akechi a card that delivered a threat. He didn’t want Akechi to feel like he had made one more enemy, especially out of the only person he felt he still had left.

The scene from the theatre where he and Akechi were cast to play unmasked characters together played once more in his head, as it had since their return from the Palace. There had been something too intimate about it, something too vulnerable for Akira to have seen without then taking into consideration when he wrote his calling card. Akechi didn’t give his trust to anyone at all, but Akira was the one who came closest to earning it from him. He couldn’t hold that delicate privilege in his hands and crush it with a single, ill thought-out action.

The page open in front of him hurt his eyes when he stared at it for too long.

“Take a break, Akira,” Morgana suggested finally, seeming like he was settling for a nap on the windowsill as well. “We still have a couple of days to send the calling card, so you don’t have to run yourself ragged thinking of it now. You must still be tired from yesterday, too.”

“Yeah, I think I’ll go take a walk,” Akira agreed, getting up from his desk and sweeping his phone off the sofa as he went for the stairs. It buzzed briefly in his hand to remind him that he had unread messages waiting. “I’ll be back later.”

“Mhm.” Already drifting off, comfortably curled up, Morgana didn’t pay too much attention to Akira as he chuckled, grabbing his cardigan off the staircase bannister where it was draped before descending into the café.

Sojiro was at the counter, brewing a cup of coffee for the pair of elderly customers sitting in the furthest booth, chattering to fill the silence. There was the muted blabber of the news on television and the bubbling of coffee that also added rhythm to the melody of Leblanc’s ordinary days, and Akira reveled in it as he went for the door.

“Going out?” Sojiro asked as he passed by.

“Just for a walk.”

“Alright. Can you bring back some milk on your way?”

“Sure.” Glad not to have been dragged into a longer conversation, Akira threw his cardigan on, grabbed his umbrella, and left the café.

Outside, the November air was chilly, although mild because of the rain. Akira enjoyed the subtle pitter-patter of the raindrops on his umbrella as he turned into the alleyway, figuring he’d just stroll around the neighbourhood to clear his head.

His phone buzzed in his pocket again, a new message incoming, and Akira picked it up to check. His messaging app had a few new conversations in it, one of them from the group chat that discussed some concerns for the casino heist, another from Iwai notifying him that new stock had come in that he’d need help with, and another from Futaba sending him a Vine compilation with the caption “lmfaooo”. He also had an advertisement from a nearby soba shop, and finally, with a single red square next to his display picture, he had a text from Akechi.

He didn’t even think before opening it up.

 **Goro** : I’m reviewing a café for my food blog today, and I must admit, the coffee here is quite the competition. [Image]

It was a picture of a cup of coffee in a delicate porcelain cup, a pristine and beautifully arranged slice of carrot cake next to it. Akira didn’t recognize the background, but he did note the gloved fingers peeking into the picture at the very corner. It was a nice, peaceful picture, probably that Akechi had sent him in order to perpetuate his deceit in the very last days of his game.

Or perhaps he’d sent it with genuine intent to share his day with Akira. After having seen the inside of his heart, Akira really could not tell what part of Akechi was real, and what part of him was the mask he wore.

**Akira** : Well we can’t have that.

**Akira** : I’ll just have to knock your socks off the next time you come over.

**Akira** : Cake does look good though. I can’t bake, so I’ll admit that, at least.

It felt so natural to quip with him like this that Akira wished, for the millionth time, that things could have been different between them. In a few days, Akechi would pull a gun on Akira in a locked underground room, and the beautiful lie would fall apart.

Akira wondered, for a moment, if he would be able to live in a dream world where all was well between him and Akechi forever. Knowing what came next, he supposed it wouldn’t be the worst thing to live that comfortable dream for a while.

**Goro:** You can cook and make coffee, so I can at least try my hand at baking.

**Goro:** One of us must, if we are to go down the line like this.

**Goro:** Knowing my limitations as a cook, however, I wouldn’t expect too much from me.

A dream world where he and Akechi could be friends. It sounded lovely, and impossible.

**Akira:** Perhaps it just isn’t meant to be.

Perhaps they just weren’t meant to be. 

**Goro** : Did I read this correctly? Are you giving up on me before you’ve even tried?

**Goro** : I could be offended, if you’re not careful.

Akira didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know what Goro wanted from him.

**Akira** : I’m not giving up on you.

**Akira** : I just don’t know what I should expect.

**Goro** : Expect nothing and take the leap of faith.

**Goro** : Isn’t that how you’ve always done it?

**Akira** : You’re right.

**Akira** : In that case, I look forward to it.

**Akira** : Please bake me a cake with Morgana’s face on it.

**Goro** : If you leap too far, you’ll just miss your mark.

**Goro** : Perhaps we’ll save the Morgana cake for another day.

Chuckling to himself fondly, Akira glanced at Akechi’s profile picture for a little longer before finally pocketing his phone. He had stopped in the middle of the street to answer his texts, and the rain still pattered softly on his umbrella. In the distance, cars honked as they passed by on the main street, civilians hurrying home before their shoes had the time to get wet. There was something quaint about the moment he’d shared with Akechi, so when he turned to walk towards the supermarket for Sojiro’s request, his heart felt light despite him still not having figured it out.

Goro was right.

He would just have to take the leap of faith.

\--- II ---

Balancing on the edge of the precipice, unknowing what awaited him in the abyss below, Akira tried to prepare his leap. However, whenever his eyes went to his notebook, his heart lurched once again. He didn’t know if he could do it, even if he was determined to try.

The night passed, sleepless for the one lying worried in his bed. The stars he’d pasted to the beams in the attic glowed softly fluorescent in the dark, offering him no solace nor answers. He simply counted them until the sun came up, and he rose to prepare for yet another day in this worldly masquerade.

The Thieves were getting nervous, and Akira could tell, simply by the way Ann looked at him in class and Morgana’s tail swished more tensely while he napped in his desk. Ryuji pulled him aside during lunch to ask him if they were sending Akechi’s calling card yet, and Akira simply said he didn’t know, which was the truth.

As always, his teammates trusted him, but he could see how his indecisiveness placed them on the edge as well. With only five days left until the 18th, they were cutting it very close.

Still, Akira couldn’t ruin this. This was his chance to help Akechi, and he would only have it once. He couldn’t make any rash decisions, and he hoped that his team, anxious as they were, could understand that.

He foresaw yet another sleepless night that same day when, the moment he laid his head on his pillow, thoughts and doubts began to scroll through his mind. He was tired, exhausted down to his very soul, but his mind still could not slow down long enough to let him rest. He was worried, and it was eating away at him. His eyes felt heavy, and his head even heavier.

Perhaps it was the frustration of insomnia, or perhaps it was instinct guiding him, but when the stars sparkled in the sky and Morgana’s soft purring filled the dusty attic air, Akira grabbed his phone, and turned it on.

**Akira** : Hey. Are you awake?

Part of him hoped that he would get no response, and part of him feared what he’d do if he got one. He stared at his screen for a minute, not sure what to think, and his heart jumped in his chest when the three dots appeared at the bottom of his screen, his correspondent typing back.

**Goro** : Unfortunately so. Is everything alright?

He let out a shaky breath, realizing that he could not go back from here. His fingers trembled as they hovered over the keys, debating what he should say. He must have taken a while to answer, for the dots appeared again.

**Goro** : Kurusu? Are you okay?

**Akira** : Yes.

He exhaled slowly, trying to calm his nerves.

**Goro** : You don’t seem so sure.

**Goro** : Nor would you have texted me so late if you were.

**Goro** : Did you want to ask me something?

**Akira** : I think I did.

**Akira** : I need some time to think about it.

**Akira** : Can you meet with me?

There was a pause, and the dots popped up again, disappearing and reappearing repeatedly as Akechi considered what he would say.

**Goro** : Now?

**Goro** : Is this in regards to Niijima’s Palace?

**Goro** : We could discuss it tomorrow after school.

**Akira** : It’s… not exactly that.

**Akira** : Please

**Akira** : *?

For another while, the chat was silent, and then the dots popped up again. Akira’s eyes were riveted to his screen, aching in the darkness as he anticipated his rival’s response.

**Goro** : Fine.

**Goro** : I assume this is a serious matter that cannot wait.

**Goro** : Where do you want to meet?

**Akira** : Inokashira Park.

**Akira** : There should be no one there at this hour.

**Goro** : Alright.

**Goro** : But if we get caught, I will not be protecting you.

**Akira** : I know.

With that, Akira turned the phone off, and gently squirmed out from under the covers, hoping not to wake the cat sleeping at his feet. Unfortunately, as he began to shuffle to put some clothes on, Morgana perked his little head up sleepily.

“Akira…?” he groaned, letting out a little mewl as he stretched his belly out. “What are you doing?”

“I need to do something,” Akira replied unclearly, keeping his voice low. He pulled on some sweatpants, unwilling to wear actual clothes at this hour.

“I’ll come with,” Morgana offered, although he sounded like he wanted to do anything but.

“It’s okay,” Akira said, deciding it would be better if he went alone. “I won’t be gone long. Go back to sleep.”

“Alright.” It was a testament to how ragged Akira had run his team recently that Morgana didn’t even try to fight him on his bedtime. Grateful for it, Akira didn’t make any more conversation, and instead grabbed his wallet, keys and phone before creeping downstairs.

He locked the café behind him and set a brisk pace towards the train station, checking his phone to look at the timetables. It would be an hour before the last train, so Akira hoped he would be able to take care of this business quickly, although perhaps that was wishful thinking. The conversation he would be having wasn’t one that he could predict in outcome.

Trying not to think about the worst-case scenario that could happen, Akira pocketed his phone and descended into the subway station.

\--- III ---

When Akira arrived at the spot they’d decided, Akechi was already there. He had biked there, if the bicycle leaning against the tree was anything to go by, and was sitting on the ground by the waterfront, enjoying the breeze dancing across the placid lake. He must’ve heard Akira approach from afar, because he turned to watch his approach, moonlight glistening in his wary eyes.

“Hello,” he simply greeted, no pleasantries whatsoever. “I want to believe that this is something worth my time, and that I will not be dozing off in class tomorrow for a prank.”

“I promise it’s important,” Akira said, smoothly taking his spot by Akechi’s side on the ground, although he did leave some space between them. Just in case. “I don’t know if you’ll want to hear it, but you have to.”

“Just tell me, then,” Akechi said in a low voice, eyes hooded in the darkness and his expression unreadable. For the first time, Akira began to wonder if perhaps it hadn’t been the best idea to come here by himself, isolated from everyone else with the one person who he knew for a fact wanted to kill him. “Take your leap of faith.”

Akira let out a heavy breath that was shakier than anything else. He opened his mouth to say something, begin his explanation somewhere, but the words got stuck in his throat as soon as he mustered them up.

There was no way to explain this to Akechi, no way to deliver the message with words.

Instead of syllables, what left his lips was a sigh, and Akira instead put his trembling hands in his jacket pocket. Akechi watched his slow movements carefully as Akira fiddled with his phone in his pocket, and then pulled it out.

Wordlessly, Akira opened the Metaverse Navigator, and with the screen open, he put it down, sliding it across the grass to place it between him and Goro.

Drawing back, he let his rival take in the sight of the Meta-Nav before he continued.

“Goro Akechi,” he simply said, and watched as the moonlight swallowed up his companion’s wide eyes.

“Candidate found.”

As the Nav’s airy voice dissipated in the air, neither of them moved. Neither of them breathed. In fact, it felt like time had frozen, just long enough for both of them to process what had happened. What manner of Pandora’s box had been opened under the stars between them.

“Why did you show me this?” Akechi finally said, his voice tight and seething with barely-contained emotion. Akira knew it from the way he clenched his fist in the grass, ripping out some of the finer blades in his anger. Even in the shadows, he could see how tightly he had clenched his jaw, rage bubbling under his skin.

“I couldn’t find any other way to tell you,” Akira murmured, because it was true. The calling card had been taunting him for days now. There were no words that could have explained this to Akechi.

“No. My question is; why?” He looked like he was barely holding back. The anger in his body reminded Akira of the very last play he’d seen in his Palace, where Akechi had let his anger fester until it erupted into a carnage. Whipping his head towards Akira, he let the younger boy see how livid he was, how close he was to the edge. “Is this you blackmailing me? Are you going to threaten me?”

“No,” Akira said firmly, swallowing heavily. He hoped that Akechi did not have anything on his person that could be used as a weapon. “I don’t intend on threatening you. I just thought you should know.”

“I already knew,” Akechi spat out, his features twisted, and Akira momentarily chided himself for not having guessed. Of course he’d known. “After all the shit I’ve been through, how could I not have one? So, I ask you again, and I advise that you be very honest with me.” Ripping a handful of grass out and throwing it to the side, Akechi glared at Akira. “Is this a threat?”

“No,” Akira repeated, as firm as he could be. “I’m not declaring war on you, too.”

“Did you see it?” Akechi cut him off, still looking murderous.

“Hmm?”

“The Palace. Did you see it?”

Something roiled in Akira’s gut. He nodded, his mouth feeling dry.

“Yes.”

“Then that is a declaration of war already. Did you find my Treasure?”

“Yes.” Again, Akira felt tiny under Akechi’s anger. There was something fearful inside of him as he stared down the man who would be his murderer. “We did.”

“And all of you together, on top of that,” Akechi scoffed, a harsh laugh escaping his lips. “Fantastic. So the Phantom Thieves are coming for me next. I should’ve known.”

Akira said nothing, letting Akechi take the lead on this one.

“How much do you know?” he finally asked, his voice tight, as if he, too, suddenly felt afraid of Akira’s answer.

“Everything,” Akira simply replied, honest. “We saw… everything.”

“Incredible,” Akechi spat out once again, trembling with fury. “So that’s it, huh? The game is up? The second I try something against you, you’ll have me take the fall, right?”

“No,” Akira insisted again, at a loss of what to say. “I’m not holding this over your head. I just wanted to let you know that… I know. What you did, and what you’re going to do.”

“Give it to me then.” Shoving his hand forward, he opened his palm out expectantly. “Just hand it over.”

“Hand what over…?”

“The calling card,” Akechi scoffed, making an impatient come-forth motion with his hand. “Do you think I’m stupid? Just hand it over and finish what you came here to do. Tomorrow, I’ll meet you in my Palace and rip you to shreds like I should’ve done long ago.”

“I don’t have the calling card,” Akira admitted, relieved to see that Akechi’s rage had morphed into something more helpless, frustrated. At the very least, it meant that he wouldn’t actually kill him and dump his body into the lake. “I didn’t come here to give it to you, either. And I don’t intend on stealing your heart tomorrow.”

“Then why!?” Goro’s voice exploded, a bat squeaking and flying out of a nearby tree at the sound of it. “Why the hell did you come here!? What is it that you want from me?”

“I wanted you to know,” Akira answered, not having any better answer anyway, “and I wanted to hear what you had to say.”

“What would I have to say?” Akechi replied venomously, nearly baring his teeth as he was slowly backed into a corner. “I’m sorry, forgive me? I will never ask for your forgiveness, and I will never ask for your pity. If you’re going to take me down, then I’ll face you with all that I have.”

“Stop trying to fight me for a second and see the bigger picture here,” Akira suddenly argued, feeling some frustration bubble up in him, too, at how stubborn Goro was being. “I said I wasn’t going to threaten you, so why are you trying to pick a fight anyway?”

“Then enlighten me, oh gracious Leader of the Phantom Thieves,” Akechi mocked, dropping his hand. “What should I be seeing as the big picture here, if not my own demise?”

“Why don’t you just work with us?” Akira asked on a whim, not really expecting Akechi to accept it. As he’d guessed, this only drew a derisive laugh out of his rival. “For real, this time. Not to betray us in the end. We know what you’re up to, we know who’s pulling the strings on your actions, so why don’t you work with us instead so we can take that bastard down together?”

“Even though you saw my innermost desires, you understand nothing,” Akechi laughed again, humourless and poisonous. “Don’t talk to me like you know me. You can’t coerce me into joining your stupid gang. If I can’t do this my way, then I’ll die on my own terms as well.”

“Why are you so stubborn about this?” Akira asked, frowning as he tried to understand Akechi’s angle.

“Wouldn’t you know best, Joker?” Akechi prompted sardonically, not expecting an actual response. “After prying my heart open with your bare hands and wrenching out all of my secrets and insecurities without my consent, shouldn’t you be able to answer that?”

The only answer that Akira had to that was silence. A pang of guilt shot through his heart when he realized that Akechi was right.

“For a while, I truly believed that you and I had something, but as it turns out, you’re no different than the rest,” Akechi finished, standing up to brush the dirt and dew off his pants.

And oh, that hurt, tearing Akira’s heart straight out of his chest and shoving it into his throat. He nearly choked at the accusation, feeling like everything had fallen apart much too quickly, and he twisted his body to try and catch Akechi before he could turn away.

Alas, his hand fell short, and Akechi turned around, going for his bike.

“I just wanted to help you,” Akira called out weakly after him, standing up as well although he didn’t give chase.

“I don’t need your pity, Kurusu.” Not turning back towards him, Akechi grabbed the helmet hanging from the handlebars and placed it on his head, snapping the buckle with a harsh click. “You know my secrets, and I know yours. We’ll play this game fair and square from now on, and may the best of us two win by sheer merit.”

“Akechi, I-” Watching his rival mount his bike, Akira lurched forward, trying to salvage something, anything from the tatters of their relationship at their feet. “Goro, wait-”

“Don’t call me that,” Akechi snapped, although there was no rage left in his body. Everything about him screamed of sorrow. Anger had bled out and left sadness in its wake.

Just like the final play Akira had seen in his Palace.

“I’ll see you on the day of the heist,” he concluded, kicking the pedals on his bike into the starting position. “Don’t text me. I don’t want to talk to you anymore.”

“No, wait-”

But Akechi was beyond listening. Without a single word more, he gave a powerful push to the pedal and headed away without a single glance back. Akira was left in the dust, to watch his back grow smaller and smaller until it was swallowed by the darkness of the forest around him.

He felt like he’d lost him for good.

\--- IV ---

In the end, Akira didn’t tell the Thieves what happened in the park between him and Akechi, but simply said that they would not be stealing his heart. Despite the general disappointment amongst them, none of them opposed the decision, as always trusting their leader to make the right call.

(This time, he didn’t know if this was the right call at all).

November 18th rolled around, and Akechi showed up to their meeting, solemn and avoiding Akira’s gaze. He only spoke when addressed, and when Akira tried to catch him on the side afterwards, he immediately left without even trying to find an excuse.

Akira just let him go again, watching the gap widen in between them.

And of course, as Sae Niijima’s shadow fell to its knees, Akira couldn’t help but glance Akechi’s way, hoping, as a final miracle, that something would have changed.

But nothing had changed. Akechi’s expression behind the pointy-nosed mask was unreadable, and when Akira numbly separated from the group to draw the security team’s attention, he did not look back.

He was arrested merely fifteen minutes later, wondering if there had ever even existed a chance to save Goro Akechi from his demons.

\--- V ---

The interrogation room was cold, freezing even as Akira slowly lost blood, the chill creeping through the metal chair and invading the marrow of his bones. Despite insisting that she was short on time, Sae Niijima had still taken the time to talk to him, listening to him recount his story from the very beginning.

He wasn’t sure he had said everything right, but all he knew was that Sae had his phone, and Akechi was on his way. This was it- the final leg of the plan. He figured he’d be more afraid if the ridiculous amounts of police-sanctioned ketamine didn’t make his head feel so heavy. Small mercies.

He was floating for a while in his half-dissociated state, left to his own devices in the dim room. Part of him found it funny to glance around, spotting every bloodstain he had left behind as he was kicked around the room by adults nearly three times his age. Part of him was nauseous, outraged, exhausted, suffering.

Everything hurt, and his face throbbed with all the new bruises he had, his vision occasionally blurring between the drugs and his rapidly-swelling black eye. There was blood on his lip, iron on his tongue, and Akira hoped that the pain in his upper abdomen was nothing too serious. If he remembered right, there were some mildly important organs in there that wouldn’t do well if bruised. His right leg had pins and needles in it, aching all the way into his toes after that vicious stomp on his femur. He hoped it wasn’t cracked. He’d heard that femurs took the longest time to heal.

Everything hurt, and everything sucked.

He was floating again, unsure how much time had passed since he’d been left alone.

Dimly, he hoped that if Goro was to kill him, that he’d do it quick.

Almost as if having heard the call for him, the door suddenly opened, and Goro Akechi walked in, alone. Snapped out of his drug-induced dissociation by the ominous sound of the creaking door, Akira glanced up blearily, watching his prim and properly dressed rival walk slowly towards him. He felt eyes on his pitiful, beat-up body, and did his best to at least sit straight while his murderer surveyed the damage done to him.

“So this is it.” Goro’s voice was somehow harmonious in the silent interrogation room. Akira was happy to hear it after all the brutality he’d endured, even though he knew that Akechi was not here to do anything different. “This was your master plan.”

“Did it work?” Akira croaked out, figuring that if he was to die, he may as well enjoy his last moments, high off his ass and bantering with the only boy who’d ever made him feel special.

“It would have, if I hadn’t known that you were on to me.” Brandishing Akira’s phone from his pocket, Goro showed it back to him before stowing it away again. “But knowing what I did, I took the phone from Sae Niijima, and discovered the Meta-Nav activated on it. Clever, but risky. And, I win this time.”

“Fair and square,” Akira chuckled, coughing when his dry throat didn’t appreciate his humour.

“Why aren’t you afraid?” Akechi asked, his expression still difficult to read. He merely stood at the end of the table, watching Akira. “Are you just that dumb?”

“No, I’m really high,” Akira admitted, trying for a smile although the reality of what had been done to him prevented his joke from sounding like one. “Sorry. Everything hurts. I don’t even remember what I said to Sae Niijima for her to believe me.”

“And yet you’re still making light of your situation…” Akechi sighed, shaking his head as he reached into his tan jacket uniform. “You’re insane.”

As if to punctuate his accusation, Akechi removed his hand, and with it slid out a gun. A real one, police-issued, untraceable considering every other corrupted official involved in Akira’s death.

“Checkmate. This is how your justice ends,” Akechi said solemnly, his eyes almost sad as he raised the gun to Akira’s forehead and clicked the safety off with his thumb. Akira followed his near-mechanical movements, tracing the arc of his arms up until their eyes met; one clouded in pain, and the other clouded with doubt.

Oh, how Akira’s heart ached for Goro Akechi, even when he was a twitch away from killing him.

And it really would take just a twitch, for Akechi’s finger to slip off the guard and squeeze the trigger. However, he stood still. Something stopped him, even after everything said and done, and Akira held his gaze, trying to figure out what it was.

“Why?” Akechi finally asked, his hand trembling briefly along with his voice. He looked sad, confused like this, or maybe Akira was just projecting. “Why didn’t you do it?”

“Do what?” Akira asked, trying to focus, trying with all his might to listen to every word that he still had left to say.

“Steal my Treasure,” Akechi clarified, looking conflicted. “You could’ve changed my heart. You could’ve stopped this from happening. You had the advantage, but you still chose to let me win… Why?”

Akira just stared, letting the vulnerable undertone of his words wash over him. He knew this Goro- the one unmasked in the Palace, the one who shared half of himself with Akira’s half. This wasn’t Zanni, nor Arlecchino, nor Brighella; this was Goro, one half of the Inamorati, the boy behind the mask, the one who still had hope of being saved.

“I chose not to do it,” Akira answered in that regard, his eyes never leaving Akechi’s. His tongue felt heavy, but he didn’t want to mess this up. He had to let Goro know the truth, what he hadn’t managed to say to him in the park that fateful night.

He needed Akechi to know that in his very own heart, they were Innamorati- existing together, or not at all.

“Everyone who was ever supposed to care for you has ended up betraying you,” he said, taking his time. “I didn’t want to be one of them, too.”

He saw the exact moment that something broke, when Goro’s eyes widened, and then glossed over. His bottom lip twitched, tell-tale, and when his outstretched arm fell just a little, Akira knew he’d gotten his point across. Whatever happened next, he didn’t care. He closed his eyes, and waited.

He waited, plunged in the darkness behind his eyelids, listening to the shuffle of Goro’s clothes as he moved, and waited, and simply didn’t shoot. In truth, the adrenaline was wearing off, leaving Akira weak and exhausted in his seat, so he just wished Goro would make his choice quick- whatever the choice ended up being.

“I hate you,” his rival finally murmured, and Akira cracked his eyes open just in time to see him retract the gun, clicking the safety back on before slipping it into his jacket again. His eyes were downcast, focused on his task rather than on Akira, as if he didn’t dare meet his eyes again.

“Goro…?”

“Even when I thought I’d won, I-” his breath hitched, cutting himself off. “You always have to have the last word, don’t you?”

It didn’t sound like he expected an answer, and Akira didn’t give him one. He simply watched as Goro jerkily glanced around, making sure he didn’t leave a single trace of his visit before heading for the door.

“I envy you, you know,” Goro finally admitted, his back turned and his hand on the handle. “You and your… reckless convictions… The way you do whatever the hell you want without letting anyone stop you… You really do live up to your name, Joker. The ultimate trump card.”

Akira didn’t have time to question the statement. Before he could even muster the energy to reply, Akechi had opened the door, and had walked out. The lock clicked behind him, leaving Akira trapped by himself once again.

For a beat, and then two, Akira just breathed.

And finally, the adrenaline left his body entirely, his hands beginning to shake and his heart rising in his throat. Even as the pain of his battered body and traumatic experience rushed into him like a tsunami, he could only find it within himself to laugh, loud and hard and alive, alive, _alive_ -

He fell off the chair and threw up. Bile tinted orange with blood dripped to the floor as he heaved, shoulders shaking and tears rolling down his face, still laughing even though he didn’t know why. He didn’t have the energy to get up, either, simply falling on his side and giggling without restraint.

When Sae Niijima rushed into the interrogation room twenty minutes later, frazzled and confused and with a single mission assigned unexpectedly to her, she found Akira in the corner, curled up on the floor between a fallen chair and an empty syringe. He trembled as he cried softly; scared, relieved, alive.

\--- VI ---

The next afternoon, the Phantom Thieves across Tokyo listened with glee to the urgent broadcast that said that the leader of the Phantom Thieves had committed suicide in custody. In private, they each rejoiced for a plan well executed, forever unaware that its success had hinged on a single sentence said exactly when needed.

And though Akira was still aching from being essentially tortured by the police, it felt undeniably good to be back amongst his friends, celebrating their hard-earned victory surrounded by everyone that mattered.

All except one.

Akira didn’t expect Goro to show up to this “I-faked-my-own-death-and-narrowly-missed-but-I’m-still-alive” party, but still felt disappointment when he didn’t find him amongst his friends. A nudge on his arm made a bruise flare up in pain, and the playful kick of a foot against his made his entire leg seize up and momentarily go numb. Akira didn’t blame anyone, because Goro was the only one of them who had seen the real extent of the damage done to him and that now hid under layers and layers of concealer and foundation.

He really wished he could be here with them, celebrating the victory that he had assured them all in the end.

That evening, Akira retired early, his painkillers wearing off after the party and the ache returning into his bones. When the last of his friends had left, he retreated to his room to begin changing into his night wear. Morgana stayed with him, obviously worried, and looked more and more concerned the more layers of clothing Akira took off.

Perhaps it was after Morgana made a concerned comment about the massive bruising on the bottom of his ribcage that Akira decided he’d rather not think about it anymore, grabbing his toiletries and going down to change in the bathroom instead.

He was in the middle of removing the makeup from his face when suddenly, he heard voices rise from the outside. Frowning, he rinsed and dried his face, some of the leftover concealer coming off on his towel, and decided to check it out subtly.

He cracked the door to the bathroom open, letting the voices filter in better. To his surprise, it was Sojiro who was raising his first.

“I told you not to come in here anymore!”

“How dare you show your face after everything you did!” Even more surprisingly, it was Morgana, and Akira’s heart flipped in his chest, knowing that Morgana wouldn’t bother yelling at someone who couldn’t understand him. “It’s your fault he’s gone! Get out of here, traitor!”

Akira winced at that, not liking the sound of Morgana’s accusations. He didn’t need to see the scene to know what was going on, and, determined to make it right, he swung the door open to step out.

“Shit!” Sojiro and Morgana exclaimed in near-comical unison, but Akira couldn’t find it in himself to laugh.

Instead, he stepped out, and stared down the café until his eyes met Goro’s at the entrance.

Everything stilled, Morgana looking shell-shocked and Sojiro going pale. Akira and Goro stared each other down, assessing one another as always. Akira felt Goro’s eyes all over his battered face, and in return, he inspected the haggard look of him, how he’d tied his greasy hair back, how his face was pale and haunted, how the circles around his heavy eyes were bruised dark, how he slumped over just a little.

Goro looked worse for wear, and unlike for Akira, there was no one around to help him pick himself up.

“I’m okay,” Akira assured him, his voice rasping quietly. It was surely what Goro wanted to know, showing up unannounced like this.

Goro assessed him for a few beats longer, and finally sighed, nodding.

“Good,” was all he said, sounding like an immense weight had tumbled off his shoulders. Without another word, he turned to leave the café, hand on the door handle when Akira stopped him again.

“Goro,” he called, feeling bolder now that he’d seen his friend’s resolve. The other boy froze, giving Akira the time he needed to finish. “Thank you.”

Goro visibly debated replying for a while, but ultimately, simply nodded again, and left the café. Akira let him go, knowing that they would meet again soon.

For now, he had a ton of damage control to do.

“What was that about!?” Morgana screeched hysterically as soon as Akechi had stepped out. “Akira you idiot, our entire plan’s gone down the drain!”

“Don’t know what that thing’s yelling about, but I’ve got some questions of my own,” Sojiro frowned, crossing his arms in a way that said that Akira wouldn’t be leaving without giving answers. “What’s going on between you two? Wasn’t that kid the traitor who came to kill you in police custody?”

“He was,” Akira confirmed, drawing another outraged screech from Morgana. “Something happened down there, and instead of killing me, he called Sae Niijima to come help me.”

“Niijima was supposed to have the phone with Futaba’s instructions anyway!” Morgana exclaimed, still confused. “She would’ve helped you anyway!”

“Goro took the phone from her, so she never heard Futaba’s instructions,” Akira explained as calmly as he could, sliding into a booth when his leg began to ache. “He was the one who called her back and arranged for me to be declared dead anyway.”

“How did he know to take the phone?” Morgana asked, still worried, but at least calming down slightly. “Niijima wasn’t supposed to give it to him.”

“He knew we were up to something,” Akira simply shrugged like it was no big deal. “I told him as much.”

“Wha-” Morgana arched his back and hissed, visibly pissed. “Akira! You reckless idiot, why would you- our plan- why did you tell him!?”

“Alright, calm down, cat,” Sojiro groaned, rubbing his face. “Clearly, there’s a lot here between them that we don’t know about. We should just trust what he says and take for granted that this Akechi kid didn’t actually betray you, and that hopefully, that means he won’t sell you out.”

“He won’t,” Akira assured, although he didn’t know where this conviction came from.

“It’s all over for us if you’re wrong,” Morgana grumbled, still not happy with this conclusion but acknowledging Sojiro’s words. “The Phantom Thieves will fall and you’ll die for real if he betrays us again.”

“I think he’s tired of betrayals and lies everywhere he goes,” Akira simply said, turning around to leave. “I believe in him.”

“If you say so…” Sojiro muttered, then let out a self-suffering sigh. “Seriously, why can’t anything ever be simple with a troublesome kid like you…?”

“Simple isn’t flashy enough,” Akira joked, glad to see the atmosphere loosen up. He limped onto the first step up the stairs, wincing when he felt his bruised leg twinge at the weight. “I’m going to bed. Coming, Morgana?”

“No,” the cat gruffly answered, tail still raised and tense. “I’m mad at you. I’m gonna go sleep with Futaba tonight.”

Akira could only laugh, knowing that Morgana just needed time to think. He gave his friend an understanding nod, hoping he was able to reassure him.

“Alright. Good night, Morgana. Good night, Boss.”

“Night,” came the grumbled replies from them as he climbed into the attic, limbs already dragging as soon as his eyes landed on the bed.

He couldn’t wait to sleep and rest his aching body, and hopefully sort out some of the hectic thoughts bouncing around in his head. As exhausted as he was, however, sleep did not come easy, nightmares waiting for him just on the other side of consciousness. He barely dozed off before a phantom pain woke him up again, ache dissipating as he drifted back into wakefulness.

By the early hours of the morning, he still hadn’t managed to get any sleep, simultaneously wishing he could just drift off and rest, and being scared of what would happen if he did.

With the terror of his interrogation still fresh on his mind, Akira woke up gasping from yet another memory, visceral and clinging to him like a curse. The memories of torture and coercion whirled in his head, only made worse by missing bits and pieces that Akira knew was amnesia from the ketamine. His abdomen hurt where the police officer had kicked him mercilessly while he was already down, just like a misbehaving dog, and it had been so painful that Akira had gagged, wanting to curl up but unable to because of his hands cuffed behind his back, coughing and crying and scared. Nausea roiled in his gut at the recollection, and Akira sat up sweating, his shirt sticking to his chest and wet on the back of his neck. He couldn’t breathe. His chest was too tight, he simply couldn’t breathe-

Shivering with his entire body, Akira glanced around, urgently looking for something to help. Belatedly, he remembered Morgana being out for the night, and the reminder that he was alone crushed his chest in on itself even more. Tears filled his eyes when the void began to swallow him whole, dragging him in even as he clawed at his arms, trying to pull himself out. He was alone, left behind, left to die.

His hands shook terribly as he grabbed for his phone, his breath hitching loudly as another wave of nausea rolled across him. His heart beat like he was running a sprint, head swimming and making his vision blurry as he tapped at the screen, scrolling to find his chosen contact and pressing the call button without a second thought.

The phone shook in his hand as he put it up to his ear, drawing his knees up and curling against the corner on his bed, blanket draped heavy and comforting over his lap. On the fourth ring, just as Akira was about to give up, there was finally a click on the other side, and the dial tone stopped.

Still, nobody answered on the other side.

“You’re there, right?” Akira just asked, knowing he sounded pathetic but too shaken by his nightmares to care. “You’re listening, aren’t you?”

Again, silence. However, Akira could hear soft breathing on the other side, slow and quiet. Letting out a self-deprecating chuckle, he tried to slow his heaving breaths down to match them.

“I guess I didn’t make it out of there without losing something, in the end,” he said breathlessly, wiping a tear that was about to tip over the corner of his eye. “Kind of stupid not to have expected it.”

Still, nothing was said on the other end, which Akira found simultaneously reassuring and frightening.

“You’re not regretting it, are you?” he asked meekly, biting his thumbnail. “I know you’re also caught in something that’s bigger than you, and I know that you’ve got a lot to lose, too.” They’d dodged this bullet, but the war was still far from over, and Akira knew that very well. Just the simple fact that he had been pronounced dead across the country proved it. The most dangerous part of the game began now, and Akira knew that the stakes were much higher than before.

Not just for him, but for everyone involved, on each side of the chessboard.

“I guess there’s no point in worrying about it now,” Akira continued his one-sided conversation, still letting the soft breathing on the other side guide him into a less frazzled state of mind. “What’s done is done, and we’ll have to play it by ear from here on out. I hope that…” he faltered, cutting himself off, unsure if he should speak his mind so honestly. “I hope that I can count on you, too, in whatever comes next,” he finally decided to say, candid in the wake of how vulnerable his dreams had left him.

Trailing off, he listened for some kind of acknowledgment, but once again, the line was totally silent. Outside, crickets sang loudly, filling the silence with the sound of their woes. Slowly, Akira felt the nausea recede and the ball of anxiety in his stomach unravel. His arm ached from holding up the phone for so long, but he kept it glued to his ear even when there was nothing to hear or say because it was his very last tether to the shore as he fought the raging sea of emotions in his heart. Within a few minutes of just breathing in silence, he finally sighed, the last of his terror leaving his body and leaving him exhausted instead.

“I’m going to go to sleep,” he finally announced, shuffling his way inelegantly back under the covers and throwing them up to his chin. “Thanks. For listening. I didn’t mean to wake you up with my nightmares, too.”

“Is Morgana with you?” Goro finally said on the other end of the line, his voice sleepy and raspy as if he’d just woken up and dozed right off again.

“Hmm?” Caught unaware by the sound of his voice, Akira let it warm him over, etching a smile. “No. He’s mad at me so he went to Futaba’s tonight.”

“In that case, you don’t need to hang up, if you’d like.” Goro seemed to want to express something, but his words were calculated, as if he was trying to cover his intentions up.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Akira simply asked, too tired to play games with his rival.

“I’m going to sleep, because I actually have school tomorrow,” Goro just huffed as if inconvenienced, the shuffling of sheets and the creaking of bed springs punctuating his sentence on his side. When he settled down and silence came down on them like a blanket again, Akira opened his ear to catch the rest of it, murmured. “But I won’t hang up if you don’t want me to.”

“I’d like that,” Akira immediately answered, perhaps a little too eager, his heart flipping in his chest at the show of genuine kind-heartedness from Goro. Even if he woke up from another nightmare again later in the night, at least he wouldn’t be alone for it. “Thanks. Sleep well.”

“Mhm.”

Placing the phone down next to his face, Akira let out a controlled sigh to unload the last of his worries from his shoulders, and when he opened his eyes next, Goro’s profile picture was still brightly staring at him on his screen.

Something squeezed in his chest again, something full and fulfilling, and before Akira knew it, he’d dozed off to the sound of Goro’s slow breathing.

\--- VII ---

The Phantom Thieves put their activities on hold for a couple of days, although it was mostly for Akira’s sake. He could tell how they tiptoed around him a little bit since his triumphant return from the jaws of death, and he couldn’t blame them. After all, their situation was precarious at best, dangerous at worst.

Of course, Akira also took into account how pissed his team members were with him when they learned that he’d been meeting Goro behind their backs prior to stealing Niijima’s Treasure, glad to at least be forgiven after all of them had a chance to chew him up for his recklessness. Makoto especially had not held back, nearly red in the face as she outlined every way that things could have gone wrong after Akira essentially revealed their plan to their enemy.

“All I’m saying is…” She concluded her tirade with a sigh, her features softening. The afternoon light that filtered in from Leblanc’s glass storefront cast an orange light on her face, giving it a melancholic look. All of the Phantom Thieves in the booths shared it in varying degrees. “You need to be more careful, Akira. Your bravery and willingness to throw yourself into situations head-first is admirable, but there comes a time where you have to step back and think before you act.”

“And, you need to rely on us a lot more,” Ann added, stirring her cold cup of coffee absentmindedly. “We’re your friends, aren’t we? This isn’t the kind of thing you can just do by yourself.”

“We were just so worried when Morgana told us that Akechi knew you were alive,” Futaba said dejectedly, rolling a strand of hair on her finger, knees drawn up on the booth. “For a second, it was like- did everything we do just go down the drain? Was it all for nothing?”

“Just…” Ryuji picked up from where Futaba trailed off, ruffling his hair in irritation. “You need to trust us a little more, man. We’ve always trusted you, so it kinda sucks to know that you don’t feel the same way.”

“I do,” Akira rushed to correct them, eyes wide. One of them was still slightly swollen on the cheekbone, aching when he opened it. “I trust you, Ryuji, guys. I do. I trust you more than anything.”

“It is simply a matter of that conviction not being reflected in the way that you’ve gone behind our backs in regards to Goro Akechi,” Yusuke said, trying to be objective, but only making Akira feel guiltier. “We’re a team, Akira. Perhaps we could have reworked our plans together, had you kept us in the loop.”

“You don’t like him, though,” Akira replied, perhaps a bit petulantly. He felt like a child being scolded by his entire extended family for being naughty, and he hated being stared down like this. “If I told you I wanted to help Goro, you wouldn’t have gotten on board with me.”

“How would you know that?” Makoto challenged, drumming her manicured fingers on the table nervously. “You never told us how you really felt. You don’t know what we would have decided.”

“I know it because every time I mention him, you guys act like I’m playing with a ticking time bomb,” Akira snapped back, tensing and then forcing himself to relax when he noticed that he wasn’t helping the situation. He’d been on edge since he’d come back from the police station, trauma still fresh on his mind and his nerves still singed from constant nightmares and self-doubt, although he knew that it didn’t excuse him being a dick to his friends. “Sorry. I just… I wish you’d give him a chance.”

“Goro Akechi is a murderer, Akira,” Haru reminded him, her voice tight. “He would’ve been yours, too, if you hadn’t managed to convince him.”

“This is what I mean,” Akira sighed, running a hand through his hair to let some steam out. “Every time I talk about him, you treat me like I’m crazy for seeing who he is beyond his crimes.”

“Well, I mean… if someone’s a killer, isn’t that already all you need to know about who he is as a person?” Ryuji asked rhetorically, not getting it. “The guy’s bad, dude. I’m not saying he didn’t go through some real shit to get to where he is right now, but that doesn’t excuse the fact that he’s literally a hitman.”

“I’m not trying to excuse him, either,” Akira assured him. “I don’t think anyone can forgive him for what he’s done, but he can still change. Remember that he’s not the one in control, and that someone else is pulling his strings. That person’s the real criminal. Goro wouldn’t have been forced to kill if it hadn’t been for him.”

“Masayoshi Shido…” Futaba murmured under her breath, almost like an afterthought. Morgana’s ear twitched at the sound of it, but he didn’t say anything, still perched on one of the highchairs, listening.

“I’ve spent time with him and I’ve gotten to know him,” Akira continued, wringing his hands together under the table. “Not as the Detective Prince, but as Goro Akechi, and there’s still a person underneath all that glamour. He’s still there, and some of the stuff we saw in his heart, it-” His breath caught in his throat at some of the more gruesome memories of the Theatre of Deceit. “I just can’t turn my back on him, knowing that he needs help.”

“Okay, why don’t you just… tell it to us as it is, then?” Ann suggested, backing off. She had always been the most forgiving of them all, and in this moment, when they seriously needed someone to de-escalate the situation, Akira was so grateful for her kindness. “What should we do about Akechi from here on out?”

“Well, we’re going against this Shido guy next, right?” Ryuji jumped in, always ready to talk about Phantom Thief business. “We should totally get started on his keywords. Maybe Akechi can help us with them, too!”

“That would be the wisest course of action,” Yusuke agreed. “Would he be willing to cooperate with us, if we said we were going after Shido?”

“Maybe,” Akira replied unclearly, unsure if Goro’s pride would allow him to join the Phantom Thieves once more, genuinely joining forces this time. “I’ll have to ask.”

“Alright, when should we meet next, then?” Haru asked, probably glad not to be discussing Akechi anymore.

“Give me a few days to talk to Goro,” Akira requested. “I don’t know how he’ll react.”

Again, there was a veil of tense discomfort that descended upon the Thieves, and Akira regretted his poor choice of words.

“He’s been going through a lot too, recently, being a triple-agent and all,” he justified, trying to put their minds at ease. “Whenever it’s safe for both of us for him to talk to me, I’ll ask.”

“Alright… we’ll wait for you, then,” Makoto sighed, knowing that she wouldn’t be gaining any more ground on this argument.

“And you’ll keep us updated this time, right?” Ann reminded him cheerfully. “Whatever happens, Akira. We may not trust Akechi, but we trust you, so just… keep that in mind, okay?”

“Yeah, okay,” Akira conceded, feeling bad in the face of Ann’s understanding words. “I’m sorry for leaving you guys out of it the first time around. I promise I won’t hide anything from you again.”

“Good! Glad you got that through your thick skull!” Ryuji cheered, ruffling Akira’s hair perhaps too enthusiastically, drawing a squawk from the boy who rushed to grab his glasses before they tumbled off his nose. “Alright, now that all the heavy shit’s over with, let’s talk about something else, like how lucky our leader is not to be at school right now!”

“Being dead isn’t a vacation, Ryuji,” Morgana chided, finally raising his voice after having been completely silent throughout the Akechi debate. It made Akira feel strangely relieved to hear his little voice again.

As the others jumped into the conversation, shamelessly rowdy as the Phantom Thieves always were and would be, Akira shared a look with Morgana, seeing on the cat’s face that they weren’t quite done talking about this yet. However, for now, when the olive branch had been accepted by everyone involved, they let the subject drop, and got back to enjoying their afternoon like they deserved to as kids.

Later that night, as Akira settled into bed, Morgana brought the topic up again just long enough to say his piece in private.

“I think I get where you’re coming from with Akechi,” the cat admitted just as Akira put his head on the pillow. Akira immediately glanced back up again, but the cat had settled at his feet, back turned to him. “Your ability to look past what you see and understand people beyond their actions… I guess I’m grateful for it.”

“What’s wrong, Morgana?” Akira asked, sensing something solemn about his friend’s words.

“I’m just saying… what if I’m a bad person, too?” Morgana said, turning back to glance sadly at Akira. “I don’t have memories, right? So what if… what if I’ve done some horrible things, too? Does that mean I won’t have my place with you guys anymore, like Akechi?”

“Even if you did horrible things in the past, you still have the power to change,” Akira shrugged. “Besides, you’ve only been kind and helpful so far. Your current conviction defines you, not your past.”

Morgana was silent as he contemplated Akira’s words, and the latter waited patiently for him to draw the conclusion slowly dawning in his eyes.

“You’re giving Akechi the same chance that you gave me,” he murmured finally, tail swishing side to side.

“I’m not blind, Morgana,” Akira said. “I think that the others are worried because they don’t get that, but I know what Goro has done, and I choose to believe him anyway because I also know his current conviction. He may not act like it, but he’s on our side. A part of him has always been on our side, even if he didn’t know it.”

“I see,” Morgana nodded, turning around to face him fully. “You know, you really are special. Not everyone can look at people and see the best in them. I’m glad you’re here, Akira.”

“Me too, Morgana,” Akira smiled, and then lied back down, sensing that their conversation was drawing to a close. “There’s nowhere else I could possibly be if not with you all.”

“Let’s take Shido down.” Yawning, Morgana walked up to Akira and waited for him to find a comfortable position to then curl up against him. “Let’s save everyone, without any exceptions.”

“Yeah.” Akira’s heart fluttered happily, glad to not be at odds with his closest friends anymore, glad not to have to pick between them and Goro Akechi anymore. “I like the sound of that.”

When the time came to take Shido’s heart, Akira would not falter. It was the least he could do, in the name of all the people who’d suffered in his hands.

All of them.

\--- VIII ---

Akira wasn’t expecting Goro to text him so soon after his visit to Leblanc, but a couple of days later, his phone buzzed with a text from an unknown number, and Akira knew that it must be him.

**???:** Hello. This is Crow.

**???:** I want to meet with you today.

**???:** Is my usual place occupied?

Akira took a second to puzzle it out, glaring at his cellphone for answers before he realized that Goro must be talking about his favourite chair at the counter downstairs. He didn’t know if they had customers, but Akira knew that Sojiro would close the café for anything, if need be.

**Akira** : It’s free.

**???** : Good.

No further texts came from the unknown number, and Akira figured he should simply wait instead of pressing Goro for answers. He seemed oddly curt over his texts, so there must have been a reason for it. Akira trusted him to explain when he arrived. In the meantime, he got dressed, and played a few rounds of the new game he’d bought on his last trip to Akihabara before he’d faked his own death.

Eventually, his phone buzzed again, with an incoming call instead. However, when Akira picked it up, he noted with mild surprise that it was from Sojiro.

“Yes?” he frowned, jumping straight to the point as soon as he picked up.

“There’s someone here to see you,” Sojiro replied gruffly, sounding like he’d rather not be having this conversation.

“Oh.” That explained the call. Surely Sojiro wouldn’t have let anyone but his immediate circle of friends up into the attic, considering present circumstances. “He can come up. You don’t have to close the store for us.”

“Cheeky brat,” Sojiro huffed, although there was no bite to it. “Treating me like your secretary… Unbelievable. Fine.”

In typical Sojiro fashion, he had hung up even before Akira could thank him. The latter simply chuckled at his guardian’s rough mannerisms, and set his phone down, saving his game progress, and turning the console off. By the time he’d put the controller away, footsteps began climbing the stairs to his room.

When Goro arrived at the top, Akira waved to him, heading over to sit on his bed so that Goro could take the sofa slightly further away.

“Dusty as ever,” Goro commented, not unkindly, heeding the invitation and taking his place on the sofa. Akira took the opportunity to look him over, glad to see that he didn’t look too worse for wear, unlike the last time he’d dropped into Leblanc. At least he looked showered and changed this time, even though the weight on his shoulders still seemed as heavy as ever.

“You look a little better today.” He simply told him as much, and Goro seemed unsurprised by the comment.

“You as well, although I surmise that it is most likely thanks to Takamaki’s makeup,” he returned pleasantly.

“Why did you want to see me, then?” Akira skipped straight to the point, too curious for his own good. “Or, wait, first: why did you text me with someone else’s phone? Is everything okay?”

“Of course not,” Goro scoffed as if Akira had asked a stupid question. “Shido’s men are still watching me, and I got too comfortable forgetting that fact. You do know who Shido is, correct?”

“Your boss,” Akira nodded, then hesitated to finish his sentence. “And your father.”

“Correct.” The sneer on Goro’s face was ugly, but thankfully, he dropped the subject quickly. “At any rate, I may have forgotten that he still had an eye on me, and I had to sit through an interrogation of my own on a certain call I made that lasted six and a half hours.”

“Oh.” Akira felt his cheeks heat up slightly at the reminder of that night. “Sorry, I didn’t… I didn’t mean to get you in trouble.”

“It’s fine. I simply convinced him I was moonlighting with a girl, and he dropped it.” At least Goro, too, had the decency to be embarrassed about it. “From then on, it became obvious that your safety would be at risk should I be careless about contacting you, so I texted you using a burner. It would be for the best if you did not text me back as much as possible,” he recommended.

“Got it.” It was a bit sad that they couldn’t communicate freely anymore, but at least Goro was still willing to meet with him in person to talk. “Okay, so… what did you want to talk to me about?”

“The Phantom Thieves,” Goro jumped right into it. “You’re planning another job, am I right?”

“I know we said we’d disband, but there’s one more person we need to take down first,” Akira said, trying to placate him.

“You’re going after Shido, aren’t you?” Goro cut him off, and in retrospect, Akira couldn’t feel surprised that he’d guessed.

“Ever since we discovered that he was the one pulling the strings, he’s been our priority target,” Akira admitted. “We had a meeting just a couple of days ago regarding the infiltration of his Palace.”

“Have you already made your way in?” Goro asked, his voice sharp and focused, leaving no room for pleasantries.

“No. We don’t know any of his keywords,” Akira shook his head, twirling a piece of hair that fell in front of his eyes between his fingers. “Actually, we were hoping you’d be able to enlighten us.”

Goro took a moment to consider the request, although if the bob of his throat was anything to go by, he was mostly just trying to spit it out, rather than debate the request.

“I know his keywords,” he finally said, swallowing heavily again. “I also know how to navigate his Palace.”

“You’ve been there before?” Akira asked, mildly surprised.

“Sometimes, when his grip on my leash becomes too tight, I like to visit it and fantasize about how it would feel to rip his heart out and crush him in the way he’s crushed every obstacle in his way,” Goro answered, shockingly candid, yet his face completely impassive. It tugged at Akira’s heart to see how this kind of sentiment didn’t even phase him anymore.

“I see. Well, if you’re offering, we’ll accept.”

“Don’t mistake this for charity,” Goro corrected him, picking at his nail beds and suddenly unable to meet Akira’s eye. Despite the bite in his tone, he looked anxious and jittery, so Akira didn’t take his vitriol to heart. “I want something in return for it.”

“How can I help you?” Akira said, watching how Goro flinched slightly at the words he chose to use. It had him faltering for a moment longer, squirming in his seat as if wondering if he should take the leap of faith or not.

Akira mentally willed him to, wishing he’d take his own advice and just dive headfirst into it.

“I want to steal my Treasure,” he finally said, letting the admission fall between them and settle. He swallowed heavily again, and Akira watched as he ripped a piece of skin off his nail bed, letting it bleed. “I need… In exchange for help with Shido’s Palace, I need your help with mine.”

“It’s a deal,” Akira said without an ounce of hesitation, amused to see Goro sigh as if he’d expected him not to waver. “Even if you didn’t give me anything in return, I would agree to help you steal your Treasure.”

“It’s… this is a transaction,” Goro insisted awkwardly, fumbling a little. Akira wanted to tease him for it but knew that it wasn’t the time to goof off with Goro’s vulnerability. “You fulfill your end of the deal, and I’ll fulfill mine.”

“Alright,” Akira nodded agreeably. “Just let me know what you want to do with your Palace, and I’ll help.”

“I want to head in tomorrow,” Goro admitted without hesitation, seemingly having thought of it already. “You have the route to my Treasure secured, correct? Then all that is left is to break the final barrier and take my Treasure, hopefully without resistance, considering that I am willing to have it taken.”

“We can’t know that for sure,” Akira corrected, remembering his strange encounter with Janus in the Theatre. “There are parts of you that you can’t consciously control.”

“Annoying, but fair,” Goro agreed, then sighed. “So. If that is all that is left to do, I also request that only you and I head into it.”

“The others can’t come with us?” Akira raised his eyebrows in mild surprise. “They would only be of help to us. Neither of us excels at healing, so at least Morgana should come with us.”

“No.” It didn’t seem like a point that Goro was willing to compromise on. “They’ve seen too much of me already. I can’t… I can’t just open my heart to people who are essentially strangers.”

“They’re my friends, Goro. They won’t hurt you,” Akira frowned, noting how the boy jumped slightly at the sound of his name. He briefly wondered if anyone ever called him by his name, for him to have reacted like that.

“They’re _your_ friends, not mine,” Goro corrected. “I’ll be civil to them from here on out, but I refuse to get too close. And, I refuse to allow them into my Palace.” Finally raising his eyes up to Akira, Goro stared him down with fire blazing in his gaze. “I’m allowed my privacy, and I expect you to respect my wishes.”

“Okay,” Akira conceded, mostly because he understood where Goro was coming from. He didn’t know how he’d feel if people suddenly walked into his heart, pried all of his secrets from him, and messed around his cognition without his consent, either, so he figured he could at least give Goro that. “Alright, we’ll go alone, just the two of us.”

“Excellent.” Looking pleased, Goro leaned back against the sofa, relaxing slightly. “Where do you usually enter it from? We should rendez-vous directly there.”

“The easiest entry point is at the TV station in Akasaka Mitsuke,” Akira explained. “Although your Palace itself isn’t the TV station, it’s easier to use the station as a checkpoint because your Palace exists in space that doesn’t exist in the real world. So there is no way to show up directly at its doorstep.”

“Fair enough,” Goro nodded sagely, and then, again, his mature persona dropped just a little, something like childish curiosity twinkling in his eyes. “And… may I ask what my keywords are?”

“I thought you would already have guessed,” Akira admitted, surprised at the inquiry.

“It’s oddly difficult to be insightful enough to determine the source of your own distortion,” Goro answered, and Akira had to give it to him on that observation. “I knew I likely had a Palace because of everything that’s happened to me, but it’s never something I pursued, simply taking it in stride.”

“I see. Well, your Palace is a theatre, and the distortion encompasses the entire world,” Akira explained patiently, glad to see Goro drop his guard despite the loaded subject at hand.

“That’s quite a large distortion,” Goro mused out loud, tapping his bottom lip in thought. “Perhaps the reach of my distortion is larger because I have finer control over my cognition, thanks to my ability to handle Personas.”

“Personas?” That caught Akira’s attention.

“Slip of the tongue,” Goro said in a tone that didn’t even bother hiding the obvious lie. “Anyway. I imagine that the Palace of a Persona user must be quite different, what with there being no Shadow to guard it.”

“It was quite difficult to get through,” Akira said, not sure if Goro wanted to hear it. “You really protect your heart with all that you have.”

“I have no choice, living what I have lived,” Goro shrugged nonchalantly, not noticing how that comment seemed to get to Akira for a second. “Anyway. I suppose I’ll see it with my own eyes tomorrow. Let’s meet at the TV station entrance after school.”

“Alright, see you there,” Akira nodded, getting up when Goro did in order to see him off.

“Be careful on your way there,” Goro instructed him. “Hide out of plain sight if I haven’t arrived yet. Don’t save my burner number on your phone and delete our previous conversation. You can keep the number written on a piece of paper, but no digital records of it. Don’t text me unless it’s an emergency. And when you arrive-”

“Goro,” Akira interrupted, unable to help himself from laughing lightly at how tense he looked. Goro simply looked at him unsurely, snapping his mouth shut anyway. “It’ll be okay. Rest well tonight, and I’ll see you tomorrow. Let’s go put an end to this.”

“Yes,” Goro said slowly, taking a deep breath. “Let’s.”

With that, he turned around, wrapping his scarf around his neck once more to hide the bottom of his face into it. There were no more words exchanged between them as he left, although he did pause for only a second at the stairs, as if wanting to say one more thing.

However, in the end, he was gone without a glance back, and Akira watched him go with a fond look on his face.

This was for the best, he told himself, sitting back down on his bed and letting out the sigh he had been holding back for most of the conversation. However, once it was out, he felt lighter than before, somehow reassured that things could only look up from here.

Tomorrow they’d free Goro from the bonds of his own heart. And after tomorrow, they’d declare war on Masayoshi Shido, their final target, and free the country from his clutches.

The Phantom Thieves were not ready to go down just yet.

With that thought in mind, Akira chuckled and grabbed his phone, preparing himself mentally for the reaction he’d get when he announced his plan on the group chat. Surely, he’d meet resistance, but Akira would not compromise.

This seemed like the way things ought to be.

\--- IX ---

There were, of course, a few protests at Akira’s plan, and Makoto even texted him when he was on the subway to Akasaka Mitsuke the next day, asking him for the hundredth time if he really thought it safe to enter Akechi’s Palace with only the man himself. Whilst Akira appreciated the concern for his personal safety, he was also running out of creative ways to assure his friends that he hadn’t completely lost his mind and was sure of himself and this plan.

He could tell them of the time he and Goro went to Mementos alone together to fight each other as evidence to back up his confidence, but he felt like it would simply make things worse at this point.

He had just finished reading Ann’s text wishing him luck, sending her a thumbs-up emoji as he stepped off the train and readjusted the hood over his head. He was pretty generic as far as looks went, but now was not the time to gamble with the chance of people recognizing him in the street. The hood might draw a few curious looks, but it would be forgotten in the chilly November air, so Akira wasn’t too worried about weaving his way through the crowd on the street. It wasn’t the same crowd as in Shibuya, mostly full of hip young professionals and older businessmen, all heading to and from their jobs in the large media corporation buildings all around the area.

As he approached the TV station, eyes peeled for his friend, he became strangely aware of Morgana’s weight missing from his bag. That was one thing that felt off about the whole operation; not having the constant presence of someone who’d been there from the very beginning. The cat had been the most supportive of his operation since their conversation the night before, so although he wasn’t physically there, Akira appreciated knowing that Morgana had his back on this one.

As the crowd thinned near the building, Akira was finally able to spot Goro, standing idle just off the entrance, eyes on his phone. He was dressed in his fall coat and scarf, slacks and dress shoes giving him the appearance of a young professional who worked in one of the media buildings adjacent. He blended right in, although that didn’t take away from his instinct, Goro raising his head from his phone and looking directly at Akira as soon as he was across the street from him.

Akira nodded at him and Goro subtly nodded back, pocketing his phone and heading off. Akira hastily crossed the street so as not to lose his trail, and followed the sight of his scarf fluttering behind him to follow him into one of the smaller alleyways in between two buildings. Their footsteps clattered against the concrete, more and more audible the more they left the buzz of the city behind them, until finally, Goro stopped them in a nook for the disused emergency staircase from the building next to them. They were far enough from the din of the afternoon crowd for Akira to hear the shuddering breath that Goro let out as they came face to face.

“We should hurry,” he immediately jumped into the topic at hand, not even greeting Akira. “I don’t think I was tailed. Shido is too busy with the election campaign to bother keeping too close tabs on me, but we can never be sure.”

“It’s nice to see you again as well, Goro,” Akira said, letting out an amused huff at the sight of his frazzled friend. “Long time no see, how are the kids?”

“Can you please be serious about this, for once?” Goro crossed his arms, decidedly unimpressed by Akira’s attempt at humour. There was real tension in his shoulders, which Akira figured might be due to the nature of their infiltration, and he wished he could just take some of his stress onto himself instead. He much preferred seeing Goro when he was relaxed and at peace.

“Okay, sorry,” he smirked, and noted with glee how the spark of challenge lit up in Goro’s dark red eyes. “I’ll do my best today, so please take care of me, senpai.”

“Unbelievable.” Goro’s sigh wasn’t totally of frustration, so Akira counted that as a win, instead taking pleasure in watching him rub the bridge of his nose to ease the headache Akira was surely giving him. “Enough chit-chat. Let’s go in.”

“Hold on.” Before Goro had a chance to open the Metaverse Navigator on his phone, Akira held up a hand to stop him, his other hand plunging into his cardigan pocket to grab the reason he’d stayed up all night. Goro cocked his head lightly to the side in curiosity as Akira pulled it out and handed it to him. “I believe this is yours.”

“Really?” Goro scoffed, contemplating the black and red calling card pinched between Akira’s fingers for a second before accepting it. “You’re really one for theatrics, aren’t you?”

“Just read it,” Akira prompted him, stepping back to give his friend some space.

“Shapeshift Master of the Masquerade, the time has come for death to lay claim to your masks,” Goro began, eyes dark and focused on the card. “For all the times that you have twisted yourself into unrecognizable monsters in order to fit with the rest of the act, retribution shall come, tearing down the curtain of deceit that veils you from the world’s eyes. You have committed atrocities for which you cannot repent on stage, and so to that end, your direction is ‘exeunt’. For your final performance, you will drop all of your masks, and confess your crimes of your own mouth.”

“So?” Akira prompted when Goro finished, his eyes unreadable.

“You know you didn’t have to write me a calling card,” he replied, pocketing the card nonetheless. “I have fine control of my own cognition, so I can make my Treasure materialize simply by willing it so.”

“Spoilsport,” Akira pouted. “Every heist needs a calling card. That’s just how the Phantom Thieves operate.”

“You’re impossible,” Goro scoffed, picking his phone up again to open the Nav. “Besides, I have a hard time believing that you wrote that card on your own. It’s much too wordy for it to be your work.”

“Did you just call me illiterate?” Akira couldn’t help but laugh, glad to see Goro participating in his quips. “I did write it by myself. I promised you that it would only be you and me from here on out, right?”

Goro seemed surprised by that statement, if the light flinch was anything to go by. He glanced up at Akira hesitantly, eyes slightly wide and genuinely taken aback, and sized him up for a moment.

Then, the moment was gone, and he had his phone out between them.

“Let’s just go,” he muttered, perhaps a bit embarrassed by all the sentimentality, and Akira let it slide this time, instead preparing for the incoming shift of spacetime around them. “Goro Akechi, Detective Prince… the world… a theatre.”

“Beginning navigation.”

\--- X ---

When the familiar warp of the cognitive world wore off, Akira dug his feet into the concrete below, grounding himself. When he clenched his fists, the familiar leather of his red gloves made a tight sound, like music to his ears. Once again, as he donned his mask as Joker, he felt an inexplicable comfort surround him, as if this was his true self on display.

Next to him, Goro had also donned his Thief attire, the bright white, gold and red getup nearly shining in the darkness of the alley they were in.

“Interesting,” he simply commented, inspecting himself as if seeing his princely costume for the very first time.

“Is something wrong?” Akira asked, puzzled at his reaction.

“Just something unexpected, I guess,” Goro answered unclearly, turning to give Akira one of his fake smiles. “Let’s head in.”

Akira couldn’t wait to tear that stupid Zanni mask right off his face and set him free.

“Alright, this way.” Leading Goro out of the alley, Akira followed the spotlights on the red sky to guide them back towards the theatre.

As they left the alleyway, the Palace stretched out before them, tall and intimidating in its fabricated pocket of spacetime, seemingly attracting them with its very own gravity. Akira wasn’t too surprised at seeing it once more in all its gaudy refinery, but Goro had to pause for a moment and study the interior of his own heart.

“So, this is what it looks like…” he whispered mostly to himself, his eyes scouring the gigantic establishment and the crowd waiting to enter it. “How extravagant…”

“Is this unexpected as well?” Akira asked, partly curious and partly amused at Goro’s reaction to his own heart, as if it had been unknown in nature to himself as well. As an afterthought, he felt a pinch of sadness.

“In a way,” Goro replied, guarded and tight-lipped about how he felt. “In any case, let’s not dawdle. I don’t suppose this place will remain very stable for very long if I spend too long in here.”

“Morgana said we usually have a couple of hours before cognition collapses on itself,” Akira assured him, although he did begin a brisk walk towards the looming building. “But we shouldn’t push it. Come on.”

Probably glad to drop the conversation, Goro enthusiastically kept up when Akira broke into a sprint, finding his place next to him so that they could run side by side. Akira’s heart soared as familiar adrenaline bloomed in his veins, flowering across his body and taking the weight off his limbs. Chancing a glance at the boy at his side, Akira found even more elation in the sway of Goro’s long hair, the focused look in his eyes as he looked forward, determined. His limbs moved fluidly, used to the strange warp of the cognitive world bogging their bodies down, graceful despite it.

He looked free when he ran, unburdened by the invisible leash around his neck, every inch of his rebellious spirit put on display for Akira to notice and appreciate.

The infiltration was easy, no challenge in traversing the halls that Akira knew well by now. The auditoriums and their crowds flew by them as they crossed the Palace, either sneaking or sprinting past the security patrolling the theatre halls with renewed fervor. Once, when they halted in a safe room to catch their breath and drink some water, Goro chanced the question as to what the auditoriums contained.

Akira promised to tell him another time.

They pressed on without another word.

Led by Akira’s instinct, the two of them effortlessly crossed the theatre, taking the final twisting corridor beyond Auditorium Three and its massive crowd in order to reach the final stretch. Its bleached, stark walls greeted Akira like an eyesore when they finally arrived, the long, thin hallway stretching out with light beckoning them forth at the end of it.

“Is this it?” Goro asked, panting lightly when they stopped for a breather. “Is that the Treasure Room?”

“At the end there, yes,” Akira nodded, catching his breath as well. “There’s a guard, but I’m hoping you’ll be able to convince it.”

“It’s worth a try,” Goro shrugged, not seeming too concerned with the supposed obstacle. “Let’s go see.”

As they jogged down the hallway, the usher at the booth came within sight, closer and closer until they slowed to a stop in front of it. It bowed to them, its bloody red eyes glowing as it sized them up.

“Welcome, Master,” it greeted, paying particular attention to Goro. “How unexpected to find you here. Did you want to enter the amphitheatre?”

“Yes,” Goro nodded, immediately falling into his role. “Let me through.”

“Of course,” the Shadow nodded, motioning at the door. Its eyes remained trained on Akira, however, eerily emotionless. “And…”

“I’m his plus one,” Akira immediately cut in before the Shadow had time to say anything.

“Of course.” Backing off, the Shadow nodded to him as well. “I remember you. Please go on ahead, and enjoy the show.”

Seeing confusion dawn on Goro’s face, Akira quickly motioned him forward, promising him answers when they were alone. Leaving the Shadow behind, they walked through the doorway.

“What did it mean by a show?” the older boy asked as they slowly made their way down the antechamber, as stark white as the hallway that preceded it.

“The auditoriums have been playing dramatized renditions of memories or cognitions of yours, with masked actors to play each role involved,” Akira explained quickly. “It’s a little complicated, but I’ll tell you more about it once we’re out of here, if you want.”

“Fine.” He didn’t seem to understand it all, but it wasn’t a priority to understand everything at this point. “Let’s focus on what lies ahead for now.”

It was sound advice. The entrance to the amphitheatre loomed before them, a simple archway covered by long red curtains that billowed lightly in an invisible wind. Beyond it, Akira knew to expect the Treasure, but everything else was a mystery. The only way to find out would be to go forth.

Nodding to Goro, he took a deep breath and pushed his way through the curtain.

As the darkness swallowed them up on the other side, Akira took in his new surroundings, and suddenly feeling small, his heart dropped to his stomach.

“Wow…” Even Goro couldn’t help but be overwhelmed at the sight of the amphitheatre that opened up in front of them, a gigantic circular building the size of a coliseum, a huge wooden stage at the end of it, curtains open and all spotlights aimed center, leaving the rest of the room in relative obscurity. The ceiling was tall, almost impossible to see through the bright spotlights, and there were countless layers of viewing galleries carved into the sides, stone pillars running up and down the walls and bannisters decorated with Victorian gothic motifs.

They seemed to have entered through one of the galleries, the mezzanine sprawled out a few floors below, heading up to the stage. Akira felt dwarfed to stand in such a place, especially when he glanced at the galleries all around the amphitheatre and realized that they were full to the brim with people. He was never the agoraphobic type but feeling so caught up in such a huge crowd made his stomach turn nervously.

“Who are all these people?” Goro asked, he too glancing around, awed. The two of them ambled along towards the railing separating them from the long drop down to the mezzanine and leaned over lightly, taking in the sight of the endless galleries, beautifully carved columns, golden motifs and the empty stage below.

“They… don’t seem to have much form to them, actually,” Akira pointed out, inspecting around them as well. Indeed, the closest guests to them were a few dozen feet away, and though they were difficult to make out in the shadowy darkness, Akira could tell that they didn’t have any actual shape to them. There was light where their eyes should logically be, but their forms were incorporeal, dark and hazy and undefined. It was as if the viewers in the gallery were not based off of existing people, but merely existed as a concept, of a million pairs of eyes trained upon the empty stage below.

“This is… unsettling, to say the least,” Goro concluded, swallowing heavily. “Where is the Treasure? We should leave here as soon as possible.”

“I imagine that logically, it should be on the stage,” Akira theorized, turning his gaze to the stage as well.

He knew he’d been right when his eyes fell upon a familiar form, standing stock still in the center of the stage, looking right at him through the eyes of his mask.

“Janus.” The name left Akira’s mouth before he’d even realized he’d said it, drawing Goro’s attention to the stage as well.

“Janus…?” he repeated, frowning at the masked figure waiting patiently. “Who is that? Is that…” he squinted at the stage, then reeled in shock. “Is that me?”

“Janus is the part of you that separates the identities you’ve created from your own,” Akira explained, eyes still on the masked boy in the spotlight. “He’s not fully a conscious creation, but he’s also borne of your cognition, so… it’s a little complicated. I didn’t get it too much, either. He called himself a gatekeeper, at any rate, said your identities were at war with one another and that his function was to keep them separate.”

“Janus…” Goro mumbled again, as if searching his brain for something. “I know that the name exists in Western mythology, but… I’m not sure which one, nor what it represents.”

“You can search it when we get back,” Akira said, redirecting their attention. “Right now, my gut says he’s got something to say to us. We should go meet him.”

“Agreed.” Glancing around, however, Goro seemed at a loss. “It seems we have a small problem, however.”

“Hmm?”

“In this obscurity, I cannot see a way down.”

“Oh.” Glancing around to ascertain for himself, Akira realized that his partner was right. “Huh. Let’s see…”

Turning his eyes back out to the amphitheatre, he let his eyes scour the sides, hoping to find an idea of some sort. As he surveyed his surroundings, however, his eyes caught onto little protrusions in the Victorian motifs engraved into the bannisters lining the galleries on every floor. Squinting at the closest one, he realized that they were actually quite large stone hooks, and an idea popped into his head.

“I have an idea, but you probably won’t like it,” he started, unable to help but snort when he saw the deadpan he received in response.

“Pray tell, what is your terrible idea?”

“We can use our Chaînés Hooks and grapple across the bannisters, dropping one floor lower each time as we go.” Pointing at the path he envisioned, Akira pointed out each of the hooks he wanted to use. “By the time we make the third jump, we should be able to swing onto the stage and land from just high enough to get away with a rolling landing.”

“I hate this plan,” Goro immediately said, letting his emotions slip in the wake of such an acrobatic maneuver. Akira’s teammates never really had the propensity for acrobatics like he (and Kasumi) did, and Goro was no different. If they could get away with it, they usually let their leader clear the areas that required using the Hook, although sometimes, it wasn’t an option to let him go alone.

Like this time.

“If you have any other plans, I’m all ears,” Akira taunted him, grinning when Goro simply huffed and turned to the railing again.

“Just shut up and get going. I’ll follow.”

“Alright, here we go.” Vaulting onto the top of the railing, Akira hung onto a nearby column for balance, and raised his Hook to aim at a grappling hold protruding from a bannister one floor down.

Silently praying that the stone would hold their weight, he took a deep breath, and fired his Hook.

The rush of the free-fall sent his heart soaring. Wind whipping past him, swinging through the darkness and glimpses in the spotlight, Akira couldn’t help but grin. Here he was, flying, setting Goro free from the chains strangling him with the man himself at his side. There was freedom in flying, but a greater freedom in the idea of appeasing Goro Akechi’s demons. Perhaps feeling cocky on the high, he withdrew his Hook on the upward swing of his arc, and as his heart fell into his stomach at the sudden halt in motion, he fired at the next target quickly approaching him.

As expected, the grapple connected, wrapping around the grip in the bannister and sending Akira into yet another downward swing. The immaterial forms of the bright-eyed crowd blurred past him as he flew by, the stage coming closer and closer with every second. Janus still stood immobile in the middle of it, watching their descent into the amphitheatre depths impassibly, his body language betraying nothing.

Once more on the upward swing, Akira fired at the last target below him, obscured in the shadows cast by the columns of the stage. The grapple nearly missed it, wrapping around the curved end of the stone hook and throwing Akira’s swinging trajectory slightly off, but he smirked cockily anyway when the hook held his weight, allowing him to swing one last time towards the rapidly-approaching stage below. Perhaps from the high of the acrobatics, or simply the fact that he knew that Goro was watching him from behind, he retracted his grappling hook just past the halfway point of his arc and made a tucked double-front flip in his freefall towards the stage.

He landed in a forward roll to take the stress off his knees, although the impact of the fall did leave reverberations in his legs, even as he stood, finally on solid ground. Only when he rose to his full height did he realize how big the stage really was. It hadn’t looked too impressive, all the way up from the gallery where they’d ended the amphitheatre, but now that he was standing on it, he realized that it was the size of Shujin’s gymnasium, at least. It was hot beneath the spotlights, and Akira felt a sweat break on his forehead, his black clothes suddenly stifling. He couldn’t see the galleries, nor the formless crowd anymore, drowned in the light and them in the darkness. He could only imagine their countless gazes trained on him, and shudder at the idea of being scrutinized by so many.

Just as Akira turned to face Janus, there was the whizzing noise of a retracting grapple, followed by a dull thud and the shuffle of clothes behind him. When Akira turned to check, he noted that Goro had made it, hair disheveled by the wind and clothes ruffled, but safe.

“You’re a psychopath,” he accused breathlessly, patting his hair down to tame the wilder strands. The accusation only drew another smirk out of Akira, glad that they could be joking at a time like this.

“The crazy plans always work, don’t you know?” he replied smartly, earning himself another glare from his rival.

“Let’s hope that is the case for your plan going forward,” Goro said, taking a few steps to place himself at Akira’s side, and finally giving Janus his attention. “So. This is him? The gatekeeper of my identities, or whatever it is you explained?”

“That’s him,” Akira confirmed, also sobering up as they faced their final obstacle.

“Janus, correct?” Goro called out, his voice seemingly booming with the echo of the stage. “So… you’re me.”

“I am part of you,” Janus finally replied, making no move to approach them. Goro took the initiative to close the distance between them and Akira followed, handing the lead to him for a moment. “Goro Akechi… I am a creation of your own doing, and I’ve been here for as long as you have had conscious thought.”

“And exactly what are you, may I ask?” Stopping about a dozen feet from Janus, Goro stared him down. Akira stood next to him, unsure if he should pull a weapon out or not. Janus had not threatened them yet, but it was better to be careful.

“The gatekeeper of your identities, as you may have heard,” Janus answered calmly, his voice eerily like Goro’s in the silence of the amphitheatre. “Or perhaps it would be easier to call me the handler of your masks.”

“Masks?” Goro frowned, not understanding, although Akira figured he may have understood if he had seen the plays in the auditoriums before this one. “Explain yourself.”

“Master of Deceit,” Janus called out to him, the words cold and grounding. “The face you wear is not your own. The real you is suffocating alive, and the burial is of your own doing. You created me from the moment you realized that you were not welcome in this world, to protect your broken heart and keep it away from all that sought to hurt it, yourself included. And in turn, you created several personas for yourself to don, adapting to each expectation set upon you by the adults around you. I am the part of you that separates your vulnerable real self from the parasitic identities you’ve created to survive.”

“Then in that case, I see no problem in taking you down,” Goro replied fiercely. “I don’t need anything to protect me, or whatever ‘real me’ bullshit you’re on about.”

“Beware, for I am the last shield that protects your most fragile heart.” Goro clearly didn’t like being called fragile, for he simply huffed derisively at Janus’ words. Akira paid close attention, however, wanting to know everything there was to know about him. “When I am gone, your true self will be at your mercy. You may embrace it once again, free it from its imprisonment and show the world your true colours… or you may let your cognitive parasites overtake it, snuffing out that innocent flame, forever doomed to lie to yourself.”

“And what decides the outcome?” Akira interjected, sensing that Goro didn’t want to have this conversation anymore. The latter seemed to be tense, itching to draw his weapon, as if violence would solve this problem as well.

“Strength of heart.” It seemed simple, but frustratingly vague as a directive. “When I am gone, Goro Akechi will need to make a decision; will he bring his true identity into the light once again, or will he asphyxiate it, forevermore bearing the face of his constructed selves?”

“That’s all just philosophical nonsense,” Goro sneered, finally giving into his learned bloodthirst and drawing his plasma saber. Its yellow light blinded Akira for a moment as it lit up in his hand, issuing Goro’s challenge to himself. “All I know is that you stand between me and my Treasure, and so that means that I must slay you in order to begin my atonement.”

That surprised Akira. He hadn’t thought of asking Goro the reason why he suddenly wanted to steal his own Treasure, but it hadn’t crossed his mind that it was because he wanted to redeem himself. The thought made his heart swell with pride for his other half. Now more than ever, he was determined to help him get through this.

“Atonement awaits, then,” Janus chuckled, showing emotion for the very first time. There was something cocky in his tone, returning the challenge that Goro had issued him as a harsh gust of wind swept through the stage, ruffling their clothes and forcing Goro and Akira to shield their eyes. Through the cracks, Akira watched as Janus’ feet slowly left the wooden floor, the wind carrying him into the air, hovering upright with his arms bent with elegant poise.

Floating and bathed in the bright light, donned with the two-faced mask and looking down upon them, Janus looked like the divine.

“Come, Goro Akechi,” Janus taunted, his brown hair floating around his masked face like a halo. “Show me your strength of heart.”

“With pleasure,” Goro answered him with a cocky smirk, the adrenaline already rushing into his veins. He twirled his saber in his left hand twice, and then broke into a sprint, giving out a battle cry as he jumped into the air for a downward slash at Janus.

However, Akira watched as his saber bounced right off of his enemy’s body, forcing Goro to land on his feet unsteadily. With an elegant sweep of his arm, Janus conjured forth another gust of wind that blew him back to where Akira stood.

“Hey,” Akira called out to him, drawing his dagger. “I’ll go left and you take right. Let’s try to figure out his weaknesses and affinities.”

“No.”

The firmness of Goro’s tone shocked Akira into loosening his stance, glancing at him in confusion.

“This is supposed to be a battle for my true self, or whatever,” Goro elaborated, eyes trained on Janus. “It’s my war against myself. I’ll wage it on my own.”

“What?” Akira’s eyes widened. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.” The resolve in his eyes was unwavering, and Akira knew he’d already made his decision. “If I can’t defeat the enemies that I created myself, then there is no point in calling this my atonement. Stand back, Akira. This is my fight.”

Akira hesitated a little longer, but Goro’s body language left no room for argument. And, Akira figured that he was right, that this fight to tear down his own walls was really something he could only do himself. He trusted Goro with this.

“Okay.” Sheathing his dagger, Akira took a step back. “Do it.”

“Of course,” Goro huffed, seemingly slightly surprised that Akira had backed off so easily, but grateful, nonetheless. “Just watch me.”

And Akira did, eyes trained on Goro as he stepped forward to face himself on the stage of his very own curtain call. In the light, he looked radiant, confident, and determined, and Akira could only watch him go forth to put an end to his own deceit.

“What you’ve built by your own hand can only be brought down by your own hand,” Janus commended as he stopped before him, hand tight around his sword. “Now that I see your conviction, the fight shall truly begin.”

“Bring it on,” Goro simply replied, and dropped his weight into a fighting stance.

“Very well.” The white and black strokes across Janus’ shirt seemed to blur in the bright light, giving him a mirage-like appearance. The lights seemed to intensify, subtly at first and then all at once, until Akira and Goro both had to shield their eyes as not to go totally blind. Once the brightness died down, back into its previous intensity, they opened their eyes again, and glanced at Janus.

Instead of his two-faced mask, Janus now wore Arlecchino’s; bright gold, nose pudgy and forehead bumpy. His clothes had not changed, however, his stance had now twisted into something lithe and acrobatic on his invisible footholds in the air.

“Arlecchino, the jester,” Janus said, executing an effortless saunter and backflip, as well as a pirouette and cartwheel, returning in his original spot after his show was over. “The identity that you show to the world. The masses adore watching you entertain them, twisting and dancing for their enjoyment. They laugh at your antics and applaud your success, but the moment you no longer entertain, they cast you aside. Will you be able to flay the mask away from where it has nearly fused to your own flesh?”

“Don’t underestimate me,” Goro simply warned, and quickly drawing his plasma gun, he shot at Janus.

The gatekeeper made an extravagant flip out of the way, avoiding that shot and the subsequent ones, one dodge more acrobatic than the next. Closing the distance between them, Goro shot once more to force Janus into a dodging maneuver, and then slashed at him. His saber caught his leg mid-maneuver, and Janus let out a small noise of pain.

Akira’s heart fluttered as he watched Goro retreat and relaunch another attack, now that he had established Janus’ weak point. It was odd that his previous imperviousness to Goro’s saber had disappeared in the wake of his new mask, but if he was to represent different facets of Goro, it made sense for him to have different weaknesses as well. Akira knew the masks from the plays he’d watched, but Goro hadn’t seen them, so he was going into the fight slightly more blind than Akira.

However, he’d promised not to interfere, so Akira mentally wished Goro luck, and watched the battle play out with bated breath.

Janus in this form had incredible agility, dodging Goro’s strikes, even if he, too, was light-footed in his princely outfit. The two seemed to dance around one another, striking and retreating in tandem, each bearing the marks of their respective failures on their bodies. Although Janus’ clothes had a few tears from Goro’s successful strikes, the latter also sustained a few scratches, claw marks that gouged their way through his skin, surprisingly deep.

“You’re so irritating!” Goro growled, slicing down and locking his blade with one of Janus’ palms, bright light forming claws over his hands and protecting him from Goro’s attack. The two of them held the lock for a few seconds, trying to overpower one another, pushing back on either side. “Sauntering around like that, you’re just hiding. Stop dodging, and face me for real!”

Grunting in exertion, Goro gave an extra push to his blade, and was finally able to push Janus back. The masked doppelgänger fell back, stumbling slightly in an effort to regain his agile footing, and in the time it took, Goro had his gun out and aimed.

Janus cried out when a few of Goro’s bullets hit their mark, one to the shoulder that jerked him backward, then another to the opposite flank that had him bending over, and finally one to his thigh that sent him to his knees with a grunt of surprise.

Akira held his breath when Goro raised his saber high above his head, and slashed straight down at the man kneeling before him just as he looked up.

There was the crystalline sound of glass shattering that echoed loudly through the entire amphitheatre, and Akira flinched, although when he opened his eyes to the scene again, he found Goro standing with his sword down before Janus, who now knelt at his feet, looking up through his broken mask.

Arlecchino’s pudgy nose had split into two, pieces of the mask crumbling from the slash in his forehead, its gold no longer brilliant in the light. Reaching down swiftly with his free right hand, Goro gripped the mask at the edges, and tore.

Both he and Akira let out gasps of surprise as a sudden gust of wind erupted from the spot where Janus had knelt, pushing Goro back a few steps. The maelstrom around Janus, white at first, quickly took a red tint, until the wind whipped a bloody aura around the gatekeeper.

When Janus emerged from the crimson whirlwind, there was a new mask on his face, one that both Goro and Akira knew all too well for different reasons.

“Zanni,” Janus introduced, the bright red, pointy-nose mask on his face mirroring Goro’s exactly. “The pathetic servant, for whom serving his master is the only honour.” His posture also changed, his shoulders hunching inward and his back curving under an invisible weight, knees bent and arms scrunched to his chest, pointed nose out and leading the rest of his body forward. “This is the mask you wear in the Metaverse, where you only act to do your master’s bidding. You’re low, so low beneath his feet, that you cannot help but crumble beneath your master’s power.”

“Shut up!” Enraged by the accusation, which Akira knew was a very intimate one, Goro rushed Janus and swung his blade fiercely down at him, crying out in surprise when the blade bounced off and reflected right back towards him, tearing a bloody slash into his left arm.

“So obsessed with pleasing your master, you live not for yourself, but for his glory,” Janus continued, unfazed. A sweep of his hand sent Goro flying back, hitting the wooden stage on his back harshly. Akira nearly ran forward before he reminded himself that Goro wouldn’t want his help. He’d figure it out. “No tasks are beneath you. If he needs his boots cleaned, you will lick them pristine.”

“Shut up,” Goro growled again, standing up with a murderous look in his gaze. He crushed what seemed to be a Life Stone in his hand in order to mend the slash in his shoulders, and then sheathed his sword as it was obviously useless. “I will never submit to him… He will never be my master!”

“Then will you discard this mask as well?” Janus asked, curling inward just a little more, making himself just a little smaller, and the sight of him visibly angered Goro even more. “Will you cast light upon this pathetic, lost soul, craving for his master’s approval and nothing else?”

“Is that so?” Goro scoffed, jumping a few steps back to make space between them. “If you want to be blinded and burnt, then I guess I have no choice but to dazzle you!” Putting a hand onto his red mask, Goro hooked his hands into the top of it, and tore it away from his face. “Light him up, Robin Hood!”

In an impressive whirlwind, Goro’s Persona appeared behind him, aiming its bow at Janus. When it released, javelins of light pierced through Janus’ bowed form, drawing a cry of pain from him. However, he didn’t seem winded, staying in his hunched over position and calmly cocking his sharp-nosed face at Goro.

“Tch,” he clicked his tongue, summoning Robin Hood once more. “Let’s see how you’ll fare against this. Give him more, Robin Hood!”

Again aiming his bow, the Persona sent arrows of light piercing through Janus over and over again, never relenting under Goro’s command. Although Janus faltered, he never did fall over, always recovering and glancing back up at Goro without ever touching him in return.

“What’s the use in biding your time?” Goro huffed, trying to catch his breath as the strain of overusing his Persona began to wrack through him. “You’re just going to stand there and take it? Fight back!”

“When the time is right, I shall,” Janus promised, and perhaps it was the casual dismissiveness of his tone that set Goro off, but he had Robin Hood at his command once more without wait.

“You’ve made the mistake of underestimating me,” he growled, throwing his hand out towards Janus. Robin Hood aimed. “Robin Hood! Obliterate him!”

Akira only had time to lower his body against gravity before a huge blast of almighty power imploded upon Janus, wind and wood chips from the torn-up stage flying towards him and nearly taking him off his feet. Goro didn’t often use almighty spells because of how draining they were, and Akira had forgotten how powerful they were when he did. Amongst the wreckage left of the stage and its broken floorboards, Goro stood, hunched over and panting, but looking self-satisfied all the same.

Across from him, when the dust settled, Janus still hadn’t moved, still looking at Goro curiously.

“What?” It was the first time that Akira heard Goro sound so thrown aback. He was a little stunned as well, surprised to see that the version of Janus that wore pathetic, pitiable Zanni’s mask was actually quite capable. It must have been a parallel to Goro whenever he donned the mask of Zanni; biding his time, taking all the pain he endured and only at the end, returning it tenfold.

Oh no.

“Goro, watch out!” Akira only had time to cry out in warning when the realization hit him, and he watched in horror as Janus hopped around in his spot, and then raised his hands to the sky. Power coalesced in his open palms within the blink of an eye, and with a gleeful cackle, he flung it at Goro.

It was impossible to avoid entirely, especially with his body slowed by exhaustion, so Goro could only jump out of its trajectory, crying out when the red-tinted magical energy caught him in his dodge, tearing a part of his right flank and leg open.

“Goro!” Akira cried out again, watching his friend go down into a broken floorboard, letting out a muted cry of pain. His shaking hands came up to clutch at his side, where blood was already staining his pristine white uniform, as well as the bleeding gash in his thigh that was already painting his pant leg crimson. He struggled to sit up after taking that blow, and Akira could only be thankful that he hadn’t taken it fully upfront. Still, at the sight of him, Akira couldn’t stand idle, and he took a few steps to rush towards him.

He had to stop, however, when Goro’s hand sharply whipped back towards him, trembling, but firmly raised.

“Don’t come near me,” he grunted, pushing himself to his knees and putting his hand back to his side. The other hand dipped into his pocket, looking for something. “I told you not to get involved.”

“But Goro, you’re hurt-”

“How long do you think I’ve done this on my own?” the older boy scoffed at his concern, cutting him off before he could continue. His hand left his pocket with something clutched inside. “This isn’t the worst I’ve had. I can deal with this.”

He tightened his fist, and a blue light escaped through his fingers, flowing into him. When he then pulled his hand away from the tear in his side, it had visibly stopped bleeding, and although Akira was relieved, he was also slightly disappointed that Goro was still pushing him away. He understood the need to fight on his own, but he would’ve liked to assist him, at the very least, just to remind him that he would always have his back.

Another time, then, when he wouldn’t have to deal with Goro’s stupid pride.

At the very least, the attack seemed to have exhausted Janus as well. Instead of his hunched over pose, Janus was now collapsed on the floor when they both turned their attention to him. Getting up shakily, still trying to get used to the loss of blood, Goro stumbled towards him, limping slightly on his injured leg. Janus did not react to his approach, eyes open behind the red crow mask, but barely even breathing anymore. That final retaliation seemed to have drained him, leaving him empty, nearly dead.

It didn’t take much, then, for Goro to fall to his knees as well and rip the copy of his own mask off of Janus’ face. By the looks of it, holding it in his hand and now knowing its meaning, it seemed to leave Goro bitter and disgusted. He flung it away without a second thought.

Like the previous instance, a gust of wind gathered around Janus as his mask was torn away. Goro stumbled away from him before he could be caught up in the dark wind that swirled around him, turning darker and darker until it was nearly black. While Janus emerged from the stormy maelstrom, Goro crushed another bead in his fist, just to patch the residual fatigue from blood loss as it seemed that his fight was not over yet.

The Janus that emerged next and settled in the air with a slithering move of his body was not one that Akira had seen previously, either. His mask was green in colour, covering his face down to his upper lip, his nose big and rounded and his eyes shaped thin and downward in a permanent frown accentuated by his severe eyebrows and the wrinkles on his forehead. He looked angry and mean, and although he walked like Zanni, he did carry a more threatening aura to him when he moved, torso swinging side to side but head staying vertical and fixed upon Goro no matter what.

“Brighella, the scheming servant,” Janus introduced, rubbing his hands together. “An unscrupulous man led by his own desires to serve a master for whom he would do anything- lie, cheat, even kill. But woe be those that Brighella serves, for he may either devote himself to his master, or build up the opportunity to ruin them- without a way of ever knowing which one is his true scheme. You already know which part of you plays this role. Show it to me.”

“I don’t need to show you anything.” Goro’s refusal was punctuated by the rush of wind that conjured Robin Hood once again at his side. “One more time, Robin Hood!”

The Persona aimed its bow, and shadowy specters rose from the ground to swallow up the enemy. However, Janus seemed to take them in stride, opening a clawed hand and gathering all the shadows into it. As they whirled in a wriggling black mass in his palm, he eclipsed them effortlessly with a clench of his fist.

“How do you hope to defeat your demons if you are unwilling to face them?” Janus taunted, not moving to act. “You cannot challenge the darkness if you still stand in the light. Your spirit of chaos, your core of corruption… unveil it so that you may stand on equal ground with me.”

“What’s he talking about…?” Akira muttered to himself with a pensive frown, observing the way Goro’s body tensed, fists clenched and shoulders locked. He wondered if there was something that he didn’t know about Goro yet, despite having seen everything his heart had to offer. The thought of another unknown was worrisome.

“My corrupted core, you say…” Goro contemplated, concluding with an unamused chuckle. “I see. I guess there truly is no need for me to hide anymore.” To Akira’s surprise, Goro then addressed him, turning his head to the side to make it clear that he was talking to him despite having largely ignored him for so long. “Hey, Akira. Don’t be too surprised, okay?”

“By what?” Akira frowned, watching as Goro let out another bitter chuckle.

“The real me,” he answered, and then turned back to face the front.

From behind him, Akira saw something pulsate around his body, something dark and suffocating that appeared for a split second around him. Squinting, he tried to get a better look at it when it recurred a second later, now more material, wrapping around his limbs in wisps of red and black like new skin before disappearing.

“What was that?” he murmured to himself, shivers running down his spine inexplicably at the sight of it. Though Goro still seemed like he was in control, there was something about the way his body moved jerkily forward that was eerie and unlike him.

“You asked to see the real me, so here it is,” Goro said, smirking cockily at his opponent. “Fear my true nature unleashed… Heed the call of chaos!” Another pulsation of darkness, and shadows that wriggled at his feet. Akira’s heart dropped. “Loki!”

The shadows erupted from all around him, wrapping themselves around him in a cocoon of ash and blood and shielding him from view for a moment. Akira put his arm up to protect his eyes from the debris that was kicked up by the whirling wisps around him, eyes riveted on the form that eventually emerged from the chaotic amalgamation of darkness.

It was undoubtedly Goro, and at the same time, it wasn’t.

He stood slightly hunched over, limbs heavy and weighing him down. When his clothes fully settled on his body, Akira immediately noticed the stark contrast they had with his previous princely outfit, now cloaked in a skin-tight black and blue body suit and a black cape fluttering on his back. The red mask on his face was gone, replaced by a helmet-like black mask that covered his entire head.

Black mask.

A pit opened up in Akira’s stomach as understanding hit him in the face. 

“Annihilate him, Loki!” Goro screeched, laughing darkly as the form of an unknown Persona materialized behind him, black and white perched upon a massive, glowing sword. Akira watched in abject horror as the new Persona swept around Goro once, its long braided hair trailing behind it, and with the sword in hand, brought it down in one heavy strike over Janus’ head, leaving dark purple wisps in its wake.

Dust and debris were kicked up once more under the sheer brute force of Loki’s attack, and only once they settled did Akira get a good look at Janus again. Despite having taken Goro’s offensive head-first, he looked like he still remained standing, hurt and winded but not beaten just yet.

As for Goro, he had called his new Persona back, heaving with the exertion of his transformation. His new appearance stuck to him despite his Persona receding, and Akira found himself wondering if the princely getup had been the lie all along.

“Very good,” Janus commended as the dust settled, eyes undecipherable behind his green mask. “This is the poison that runs in your veins, this is the parasite that consumes your existence. At the service of your master, you inflicted countless psychotic breakdowns, and the deaths of your victims and their victims are all on your hands. And now, the murderer has come to light- if you so desire to atone, will you banish him to the deepest pits of hell?”

“Don’t patronize me!” Goro scoffed, eyes wild behind his black mask. “I know what I did. This is my power, the one granted to me by fate itself, so there exists no outcome where I don’t end up a murderer!”

“Goro!” Akira called out, unable to take the uncertainty any longer. “Is that true? Are you the one behind the psychotic breakdowns?”

“Are you disgusted?” Goro laughed, turning his back to Janus for just a moment to answer Akira. His expression was crazed, unhinged, and it scared Akira to death to see him having lost control so quickly. “Do you regret being kind to me? Do you wish you never spared me? I’m the enemy, the one you’ve been looking for all this time- so do you regret your lost opportunity to execute your justice on me?”

“No, that’s not-” Akira interrupted himself, realizing that he didn’t know what to say. Part of him wondered if he’d made the wrong call, if Goro truly was beyond redemption, but part of him also wanted to fight for him, fight even if Goro didn’t want him to. He wondered if he would be imposing his righteousness on him if he did. “I don’t regret it,” he finally decided to say, careful and anxious. “I knew what I was getting into when I decided to take your side. Throughout all the time we spent together, I saw all I needed to see to convince me to believe you. Everything else that I learn now won’t change my decision.”

“Fool,” Goro accused, and at the sight of his torn expression, Akira pleaded guilty.

“Maybe I am.” The determination in his eyes didn’t waver. “Or maybe I’m just confident in my gamble.”

“Placing your bets on a Trickster… You’re insane,” Goro laughed, although not as bitterly as he wanted, probably. Akira was glad to see what he was doing still getting through to him, even with half his mind lost in the psychosis of his own doing.

“It takes a Trickster to believe in one,” he returned, relieved to see Goro etch a smirk in response.

“Fine. I can’t change your mind.” Throwing in the gauntlet easily for this particular battle, Goro simply turned back to Janus, who waited patiently, idly floating in the air. He gave his back to Akira once more, by choice this time, and Akira swore to protect it as it was entrusted to him.

“Do you still wish to tear down this mask as well?” Janus asked him once his attention was back. “All of your crimes, all of your cruelest, dirtiest deeds will come to light should you choose to rid yourself of this part of you. Is that truly what you desire?”

“Of course not,” Goro scoffed, drawing his sword from his side. It was no longer a plasma saber, but a jagged blade, bent like a lightning bolt and glowing faintly like electricity. “But it seems I have no choice. The path set before me ends with your destruction… and this time, it’s a path that I’m willing to walk.”

“Come then.” Opening his arms out to the side, Janus beckoned him forward for the final battle. “Show me your resolve. Show me your will to burn your deceit and raise your true self from the ashes!”

“So be it,” Goro answered, and rushed forward with his blade raised. “Manifest! Loki!”

The battle was a blur of black and white, Goro leading his skillful assault on Janus while simultaneously wielding his weapon and his Persona. Now that he had changed into his true form, that of the Black Mask, all of his attacks seemed to connect, and Akira had to appreciate just how masterfully he fought. It was obvious that he’d had much more practice in the Metaverse than he and the other Thieves had, and Akira was glad, once again, that they were on the same side from now on. There was a certain reckless abandon to the way he fought, however, which spoke of years and years of having only himself to rely on, trying to finish the battle as quickly as possible with no one else to fall back on.

It tugged at Akira’s heart to watch the bloodthirst lead him into battle, tearing mercilessly at his enemy without consideration for his own safety. Janus’ assault had not been forgiving, vindictive as he wore the mask of Brighella and returned each of Goro’s blows with one of his own. The latter already had a few visible wounds, as well as invisible ones, if some of the faults in his stance were anything to go by. Akira watched him be thrown around by Janus’ more powerful attacks, and knew that there was no way Goro would last much longer.

Still, he kept his distance, wanting to believe.

As the battle dragged on, back and forth between a boy and all the warring parts of himself, Goro seemed to become more and more desperate. Akira noted that he seemed to be sacrificing more of his defense in order to increase his offensive, and although that was a good plan on a short term, ignoring his defenses continuously would surely be his downfall. There was something manic to his movements as he slashed, laughing when they connected as if fighting within himself was something he enjoyed. Akira couldn’t help but wonder if Goro’s extended presence within his own Palace, fighting his own twisted cognition, wasn’t taking a toll on his already-precarious state of mind.

When Goro called Loki forth and didn’t even make an effort to get out of his own Persona’s attack range, Akira wondered if something had gone wrong along the way.

“Goro,” he called out, firm at first, but when he was completely ignored in favour of yet another call for Loki, he stepped forward a little more. “Goro!”

“Stay out of it!” the older boy laughed loudly, something foreign and terrifying in his voice. “I live for this!”

“What?” Akira murmured to himself, eyes wide as he watched Goro switch his grip into a two-handed wield and ram his sword into Janus’ body, stabbing him so forcefully that the blade came out through his lower back. Janus did not bleed, instead conjuring dark claws over his hands and ramming them into Goro’s exposed chest and sword arm, twisting and tearing long marks into him.

Unlike his metaphysical counterpart, Goro did bleed, and profusely so. He cried out in agony as Janus’ claws tore straight through flesh and muscle, trying to jump back but finding his sword’s jagged edge stuck in Janus’ body. When Janus raised his claws for yet another strike, Goro made the quick decision to abandon his weapon, rolling out of the way inelegantly in the wake of his injuries, but at the very least successfully avoiding the lethal strike. He landed in a kneeling position a few feet away from Janus, his hand immediately dipping into his pocket to crush another bead, staunching the heavy bleeding already drenching the front and the arm of his new uniform.

Wordlessly, Janus pulled the sword out of his abdomen and threw it off to the side, advancing upon Goro again. Instead of retreating to regroup, which would’ve been Akira’s move of choice, he instead laughed, spat blood from his split lip to the side, and jumped at Janus again with his bare hands.

“Come, Loki!” he called out, cackling loudly as he dodged one of Janus’ clawed swipes and took him by the wrists instead to immobilize him. Above him, Loki materialized, shadows bursting through the broken wooden floor and indiscriminately devouring both Goro’s and Janus’ interlocked bodies.

“Goro, stop it!” Akira called again, realizing he had to intervene at this point. Goro wouldn’t take as much damage from his own Persona as from another, but it would still hurt him, and it wasn’t something either of them were blind to. Something was terribly wrong in the desperate abandon with which Goro fought, as if he had only victory or death in sight on the horizon. “You’re hurting yourself, stop!”

Instead of replying and dismissing him once again, Goro kneed Janus in the stomach where he’d stabbed him with a roar of fury, and then letting him go, kicked him away from him. Janus fell back, rolling nimbly backwards and jumping up into his previous hovering stance, although he definitely looked worse for wear. In the time it took for him to regain his footing, Goro had already dived for his discarded sword, sweeping it off the floor with his left hand while he aimed his ray gun at Janus with his right. Two shots in his back sent Janus stumbling forward once more, falling to his knees with a final cry, defeated.

Akira sprang forward, seeing nothing but disaster unfolding before his very eyes.

“Loki!” Goro cried out once again, voice breaking and raw from all the screams and laughter leaving his heaving body. His Persona materialized above him and rushed at Janus with its sword in both hands, and Akira watched with his eyes wide as Janus lifted his head, just in time for Loki’s sword to pierce his forehead.

The tip of Loki’s sword embedded itself in Janus’ mask, Brighella shattering into pieces easily and crumbling at Janus’ feet. No gust of wind came then to replace the mask that Janus had lost, leaving Goro to look down upon a perfect copy of himself, eyes wide and pleading and scared.

At the sight of him, Goro cackled, loud and ecstatic, completely unwired. He lowered his body into pouncing stance, and rushed forward towards the defenseless boy, now unmasked.

Akira knew that boy. He knew him like the back of his own hand, like the warmth of his own soul.

“Break him, Loki!” Goro ordered as he prepared his execution swing, Loki rising up to his full height behind him, brimming with power and bloodlust as it wielded its sword high above his head to mimic its wielder.

Akira pushed his legs further and drew his dagger as he ran towards them, close, so close, just a little further-

“Protect them!” His voice was raw and desperate as he hooked his fingers into his mask and tore it away with a fervour unparalleled. “Arsène!”

The gust of spreading wings heralded his Persona’s arrival, and Akira slid in between Janus and Goro the second before Goro’s blade split Janus’ head in half.

Metal screeched loudly against metal as Akira’s dagger met Goro’s sword, both of their hands on their respective weapons to put all of their remaining strength and willpower into the final strike. Above them, Loki and Arsène also clashed in an otherworldly shriek of tricksters locking blade against claws, pushing back with the same conviction as their masters.

“Out of my way!” Goro spat out, eyes blazing furiously as he pushed against Akira.

“Stand down!” Akira warned him, pushing back. “This isn’t the way to end things!”

“All who stand in my way will be eliminated,” Goro growled. “That’s how it’s always been- I can’t allow myself to be weak any longer!”

“Snap out of it,” Akira grunted, putting all of his weight into forcing Goro back. Seeing the futility of their stalemate, Goro broke the lock of their weapons and jumped back, immediately jumping back into the fray, at Akira this time. “This isn’t the you that you decided to become! If you go down this path, nothing will have changed!”

“Shut up!” Goro cried out, crazed and nearly delirious from the pain and the high of battle. His sword clashed repeatedly with Akira’s dagger, the latter parrying each reckless strike with ease. “Nothing will change either way. At least down this path, I am assured my revenge.”

“Maybe so, but only ruin awaits you at the end!” Ducking under a wide swing, Akira slammed into Goro, sending both of them tumbling to the ground, broken floorboards driving splinters into their limbs. Above them, Loki and Arsène traded blows that resonated loudly across the amphitheatre, equally matched and unwilling to yield. “You know how this ends, don’t you? I saw it in your heart with my own eyes!”

“So what?” Goro spat, rolling to his knees. “I’m already ruined. My life has been a tragedy since day one, and tearing Shido apart with my own two hands will be my curtain call!” Pointing at Akira, he called his Persona forth. “Loki! Remove him!”

Obeying his master’s command, Loki swooped down on Akira, sword poised to strike. Without needing Akira’s prompting, however, Arsène followed, placing himself in between his master and his rival to catch his blade with his bare hands. The two otherworldly beings screeched again upon meeting, deafening and rattling through the theatre.

“That’s not an ending set in stone,” Akira insisted, darting from under Arsène’s legs to rush Goro again, keeping him occupied with a few strikes of his dagger. “You’re the master of your own future, Goro. You’ve destroyed everything that made you a slave to others, so don’t fall over the edge now!” Parrying one of his opponent’s clumsier stabs, Akira rushed forward to elbow Goro in the jaw, mostly catching his mask but effectively rattling him anyway.

Goro stumbled back, stunned with the reverberations of Akira’s strike in his helmet, and his arms fell to his side as he momentarily lost balance. Above them, Arsène dug his claws into Loki’s chest and flung him to the ground, the Persona crashing into the floorboards with a loud thud that echoed once more.

“You’re the master of your own life now!” Akira called out to him once more, whipping his free hand out to point at Goro accusingly. Arsène’s wings unfurled majestically behind him, wind whipping past them and carrying the clinking of chains upon it. “This is the freedom you fought for, so don’t you throw it away!”

Goro, at the very least, seemed to consider it. There wasn’t much strength left in his battered body, and as he neared his limit, his psychotic state seemed to lose its edge as well. Akira knew he just had to keep pushing a little further. Goro’s eyes were desperate under the mask, exhausted and confused with all the conflicting emotions raging in the sea of his soul. He was heaving for breath, clutching at his head with his free hand to replace himself, and Akira waited patiently for him to come to his conclusion.

His conclusion came when Goro let out a heart-wrenching cry of desperation, his dying roar, mustering up the last dregs of his energy to rush at Akira one last time. His swing was wide and sloppy, almost comically easy to deflect, and Akira simply danced out of its way, Goro swinging into thin air with a near-sob of frustration. As the weapon finished its arc, Akira used the momentum of his spinning dodge to roundhouse kick Goro’s left hand, his sword flying out of his grip to the sound of his pained cry, spinning through the air and lodging itself in the wooden planks right next to Loki’s head with a dull thud.

Undeterred, Goro rushed at Akira again with near animalistic instinct, claws poised with the intention of fighting until the very end. He swung a few wide arcs with his tired limbs, Akira parrying them easily with the flat of his short blade. Around them, Loki and Arsène disappeared, retreating and leaving the two of them to finish the fight themselves. Never before had Akira felt so many invisible eyes on him, all attention on the last act on stage coming to a close.

There were no words to exchange, and Akira understood that at this point. Goro’s huffs and weakening voice were all he needed to hear to know what needed to be done. The two of them stumbled back, Akira letting Goro gain some ground even though he parried each of his clawed attacks with ease. There was no other sound in the massive amphitheatre but the sound of their steps on the floorboards and the metal ringing with each clash of their weapons, occasionally punctuated by one of Goro’s desperate, weakening cries.

It was perhaps Goro’s unwillingness to give up when he knew he’d been defeated that made Akira decide to end it. Goro was already exhausted, and pushing him further would only end up hurting him. He’d done his part, and now, Akira had his role to play.

He parried one more of Goro’s swings, and deflecting his claws away from him, he dropped his dagger to the ground. It clattered loudly on the wood like a surrender, although both of them knew it was anything but.

Still, driven by nothing but momentum, Goro crashed into him with his next swing, digging his claws into his chest and pushing them both to the ground. Akira fell back first, trying to cushion his fall, and then laid completely immobile as Goro landed on top of him, one hand planted next to his face to hold himself up. His arms visibly shook as he processed their position, the finale.

“Why won’t you give up?” Goro rasped desperately, trying to catch his breath. He looked on the verge of collapse, still standing by sheer force of will.

“You asked me this question in the interrogation room, and I gave you my answer then,” Akira said, calm, searching for Goro’s eyes through the cracks in his mask.

“You didn’t know that I was a murderer back then,” Goro insisted with a bitter huff that may have been intended to be a laugh. “What’s your answer now?”

“I think that deep down, I suspected it.” Keeping his voice low, Akira tried not to flinch at the minute tightening of Goro’s claws on his chest. The sharp tips scraped against his ribs, drawing blood over the spot where his heart beat steadily. “There was just never any proof to make it real. So when I answered you back then, I gave you the answer I’d give you now.”

“I killed people you know,” Goro insisted, his voice breaking. “The Sakura girl’s mother. Okumura. It was all me.”

“I know,” Akira assured him, his heart twisting at the admission. Futaba and Haru would be devastated to hear it, but he wouldn’t give up on Goro despite it. “But I don’t think it’s my place to forgive you. There are other people who need to grant you forgiveness, and most of all, you need to forgive yourself.”

“Pretty words aren’t necessarily right,” Goro scoffed, shifting his knees on either side of Akira’s waist as they ached. “I will never forgive myself.”

“That’s not true.” Finally, Akira turned his gaze to his right, and Goro followed it until they both landed upon the kneeling form of Janus, still unmasked and quietly observing them with wide, innocent eyes. “Your strength of heart has brought you this far. Forgiving yourself is the next step. Forever’s a really long time to be at odds with yourself, so take your time, but forgive yourself.”

“You and your penchant for philosophy at the worst time,” Goro scoffed, and finally, the grip over his heart loosened. Goro withdrew his hand and threw himself to the side, falling off of Akira completely and instead laying on his back next to him. “I guess I have no choice.”

“You’ll always have a choice from here on out,” Akira assured him, a strange peace overcoming him at the sight of Goro’s exhausted, but smooth expression. There was no longer any anger or insanity twisting his youthful face, and Akira found that this was what Goro had always meant to look like. “Come on. You’ve made your choice. Let’s end this.”

Getting up first, Akira gave Goro a second to breathe before offering his hand to him. Goro just watched him curiously for a moment, as if still confused by him, and then finally, finally sat up to accept his extended hand.

Their palms clapped as Goro firmly grasped onto Akira, glove against claw but nonetheless warm. When Goro stood up, pulled to his feet by someone else for the first time in his life, there was something light and airy in the way he let out a deep sigh.

“Let’s end this,” he repeated in a murmur, and turned towards Janus once again.

They approached the kneeling cognition slowly, Akira trailing just behind Goro to let him handle the last leg of his fight. Janus watched them approach, glancing up at Goro when he stopped just above him, the two identical boys staring at each other in silence.

“So, this is the choice you’ve made,” Janus said first, his expression betraying nothing but curiosity. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” Goro nodded, his voice tight. “Janus. You were the part of me that allowed me to survive all this time, but I am no longer just surviving now. I’ll write my own story from here on out, without a need to hide behind any more masks.”

“I see.” The statement drew a tiny smile from Janus, a rare show of expression from the cognitive gatekeeper. His body began to fade, becoming slightly translucent as the light sparkled off his ethereal form. Slowly, as if responding to another gravity, Janus lifted himself off the floor and rose into the air. “Then it seems I am no longer required. The power to decide who you want to be… I hand that responsibility to you now. After more than a decade, the Theatre of Deceit shall come down, and from its ashes you will have the power to create a new you.”

Goro said nothing, and simply watched him ascend, following the gentle floating of his body up into the light until he was blinded by the spotlights.

“I look forward to it,” Janus’ voice concluded, and then faded away.

In his stead, something else came down from within the lights, and Goro instinctively put his hands out to receive it. Only once it fell into his hands did he realize that it was Janus’ original two-faced mask, smiling and crying all at once. In his hands, it felt light, almost feathery, and he turned it around a few times to inspect its smooth surface.

“That’s the Treasure?” Akira asked, keeping his voice low as not to disturb the near-heavenly silence that had descended upon the amphitheatre, dust floating in the bright spotlights and falling like snow to the broken floorboards of the stage. The crowd didn’t make a single sound, and when Akira focused beyond the stage simply out of curiosity, he realized that the thousands of eyes watching them were gone.

He and Goro were alone here.

“We’d better leave before this place starts collapsing,” Goro finally said, clutching the mask tightly against his bloody chest. He looked worse for wear, but not imminently dying, and Akira simply hoped that he had enough energy left to make it out of the Palace when this place inevitably began to fall apart.

“There should be a way out through the backstage,” Akira said, turning to glance behind the curtains for their way out. “Come on, Goro. Let’s go home.”

He started to walk away, figuring that his friend would follow, although when he didn’t hear footsteps join his own, he turned around to check.

Goro still stood in the light, clutching the mask to his chest and glancing out into the now-empty amphitheatre. Despite his battered body, wounds and exhaustion clearly weighing him down, he still managed to stand tall, contemplating. Dust floated all around him, and when the light cascaded upon him, casting his long shadow at his back, Akira could only view him as radiant.

“Akira,” he finally said, his solitary voice drowning in the silence of the theatre. Akira only stood still, watching as Goro turned towards him, and, with one more beat of hesitation, bowed his head lightly towards him. “Thank you.”

As if to punctuate his rare gratitude, the Palace gave a mighty rumble, and the distant sound of something heavy falling down reached their ears.

“Let’s go,” Goro finally said, and without glancing back, the two of them jogged out of the spotlight, exiting _stage-left_ , _exeunt_.

\--- XI ---

“The destination has been deleted. You have returned to the real world.”

The Meta-Nav’s robotic voice was drowned out by the sound of someone stumbling and crashing against the wall. Akira whipped around as the last dregs of the cognitive world wore off his body, letting him move as usual, only to watch Goro catch himself on a wall nearby, pale and hunched over.

“Goro,” he called urgently, stepping towards him to check. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Goro mumbled, waving him off when he came too close. “Just tired.”

“We should get out of here,” Akira suggested the obvious, glancing around to be sure they were alone in the alley. The sun above was only just setting, proving that they had spent only a little time in Goro’s Palace, and which also meant that the streets would still be crowded at this hour. It would be difficult to get home with Goro looking half-dead on his feet.

“Where’s the Treasure?” the latter asked, standing up to glance around them. “I had it in hand when you activated the Nav.”

“I’m not sure what I’m looking for, honestly,” Akira admitted, also looking around but finding nothing out of the ordinary on the ground nearby.

“Hmm…” Frowning, Goro searched a little more, and Akira saw how his eyes went wide in genuine shock when he spotted it. “Oh! This…”

Following his line of sight, Akira found himself looking at a tree branch on the ground, with no trees anywhere nearby. Upon closer inspection, he noticed that there was something tied to it, a bright, ardent red. Goro had picked it up by the time he figured out that it was a ribbon of some sort, and was inspecting it with a childish sort of curiosity.

“To think that this would be the source of my distortion…” he mumbled to himself, turning the stick over in his hand and holding it like he would hold a sword. “It’s…”

Suddenly, words seemed to leave him, and Akira watched his face fall, throat bobbing as he swallowed heavily. His eyes stayed riveted on the branch, now looking sorrowful, devastated.

“Is this something from your childhood?” Akira chanced a guess, watching how Goro’s jaw clenched immediately, confirming his answer.

“Yes,” Goro replied tightly, not looking like he wanted to elaborate. He ran a finger over the bumpy wood reverently, and Akira was almost resolved not to get any more explanation before Goro opened his mouth again, clearing his throat. “This… was my favourite toy as a child.”

Respectful of the painful memories that his friend was likely revisiting, Akira stayed silent, giving Goro the choice to continue.

“I found it in the park a few blocks away from where we lived, with my mother,” he continued, putting it up so Akira could see. “It looked like a sword, with the two branches sticking out here like a crossguard at the end of the hilt.” He pointed out the T-piece like branches pensively. “I remember… playing hero with it, convinced that I would protect my mother against all the villains in the world. She even gave me a spare ribbon of hers to tie around the hilt as her blessing to her little hero.”

He caressed the ribbon tied near where he gripped the wood, and Akira felt a pang in his heart at the sight of such melancholy on his face. Although his story seemed innocent enough, there seemed to be something sad in the way Goro looked at his old toy that wasn’t explained in his nostalgic story. Hence, Akira waited.

It took about a minute of complete silence for Goro to continue.

“I really thought I’d be protecting my mom with this thing,” he huffed, perhaps a little bitterly. “I remember there being one of the low-life men who employed my mother, once, who hurt her. I came home from the bathhouse and he was still there, and she was screaming. I attacked him with this, and in return, he took it from me and beat me black and blue.”

“Goro-” The horrified squeak that escaped Akira’s lips was unexpected. There was just something different, much more painful about hearing Goro willingly share his traumatic memories, rather than simply witnessing them in the Metaverse.

“That was the day, I imagine, that my Palace began to take form,” Goro continued, not paying attention to Akira’s turmoil, lost in his own memories. “I remember feeling helpless, frustrated… and realizing that I wasn’t welcome in this world. That was the day I learned the worthlessness of my own existence, and how powerless I truly was against all the people who chose to see me as unworthy of their attention. I craved strength, I craved the power to become a real hero and to protect my mom against despicable men like my father, but in the end, all I really craved was to be needed by someone.”

He still looked like he was contemplating the branch, and Akira wondered if there was something still left unsaid. Finally, after caressing the cherry-coloured ribbon on the hilt one last time, Goro took the branch with both hands and snapped it in half over his knee.

“It wasn’t a week later that my mother killed herself, and I learned that I would never be needed anywhere,” he concluded his story nonchalantly, throwing the snapped wood away for the pieces to clatter noisily against a nearby drain cover. Turning to Akira, he completely disregarded the shock etched on his face at the gruesome ending of his anecdote and motioned to the mouth of the alley further away. “Anyway, that’s all in the past now. Shall we go?”

“If you’re sure,” Akira said, taking a deep breath to steady his nerves and going after him. Goro said nothing more about his Treasure after that, leaving it behind in the alley along with his Palace.

However, it soon became clear that he was putting on a brave face, because Akira noticed his knees buckling several times before he finally gave in and fell against the wall once again.

“Hold on,” Akira urged him, rushing to support him. “Put your arm around my shoulders. Are you sure you’ll be able to get home like this?”

“I’m fine,” Goro hissed, although he was clearly lying and they both knew it. Perhaps it was for that reason that he didn’t fight when Akira looped his arm around his neck to get Goro to lean on him.

They took a few more steps before Goro let out a pained gasp and crumpled again, bringing Akira down with him this time.

“Alright, that’s enough,” Akira sighed, letting him slide onto the floor and lean against a wall while he fiddled with his phone. “I’ll call us a taxi. There’s no way you’re making it onto the subway like this.”

“I just need a moment,” Goro insisted, choking a gasp and clutching at his side urgently, probably feeling residual pain from his battle against Janus.

“Shut up,” Akira huffed, putting the phone to his ear. “Don’t be stubborn. Just let me take care of this.”

Goro glanced up at him as if he’d spoken a foreign language, trying to figure him out even though there was nothing to figure out.

“Okay,” he finally gave in, and let Akira call them a taxi.

By the time the driver arrived to pick them up in front of the nearest building, Goro had already started floating off in the same spiritual exhaustion that hit every Palace ruler once their Treasure was stolen. Akira maneuvered him none-too-gently into the back of the cab, also exhausted and wishing they didn’t have to be so far from home in this state. He looked forward to his bed the most.

“Erm… good evening,” the driver greeted, frowning into the rearview. “Did you… Did you need to go to a hospital?”

“Erm, no,” Akira shook his head, scrambling for a passable lie. “This is my client. He’s a celebrity, and I’m his manager. He passed out while filming on set today and I’m simply taking him home.”

“You look awfully young to be a manager…” the driver hummed, suspicious.

“Some skincare techniques you can only learn in this industry, I’m afraid,” Akira replied hastily, buckling Goro in. “Now, if you would kindly hurry. I have other appointments to get to.”

“Of course, Sir.” Ironic that flaunting a semblance of power was Akira’s ticket here. He couldn’t muster up the energy to laugh about it, however, laying his head back against the rest and watching Goro’s unconscious body slump against the window as the car pulled into the street.

Thankfully, the driver didn’t say anything more as they headed towards Yongen-Jaya, and Akira spent his entire ride watching the dying sunlight dance on Goro’s cheeks, casting shadows across his eyelashes while he slept and dreamt of things that only he would remember.

\--- XII ---

Futaba and Sojiro kept trying to argue against keeping Goro in Leblanc while he recovered, but Akira was adamant in opposing them. Since he initially fell into his coma-like exhaustion, the older boy had only woken up a handful of times, usually twice a day to drink water and use the bathroom before he let the exhaustion pull him back under. Akira had struggled to get him to eat in his transient periods of wakefulness, even, so it was beyond clear that Goro wasn’t ready to be left alone in his apartment to fend for himself.

Thankfully, he did have Morgana on his side, the cat faithfully sticking to his promise to believe in Akira and doing his best to help with Goro’s recovery, although most of it was just moral support for Akira. The Phantom Thieves had expressed relief that they’d successfully stolen Goro’s Treasure, and Akira had dodged all of their curious inquiries about what happened in the Treasure Hall, figuring that it wasn’t his place to elaborate. He’d asked them to wait a little longer for Goro to recover, in turn, reminding them that he’d agreed to help them with Shido’s Palace. The promise of infiltrating that particular Palace next kept the Thieves under wraps, and they were able to lead their normal lives for the most part while Goro recovered.

One of the great parts about being dead was that Akira had all day to devote himself to Goro’s care. At first, the tasks had been many, including getting Takemi on board to figure out how to care for the residuals of Goro’s otherwise-severe wounds from the Metaverse. Akira had to take an entire hour every day to change the bandages on the nearly-healed claw marks in the manner that Takemi had taught him, going slowly in order to be sure that he wasn’t risking causing any infections.

Then, as Goro began to wake up in brief pockets of time, he had to figure out how to fit everything in the time crunch before he drifted off again. Most of the time, Goro passed out on the way up the stairs from the bathroom, which left Akira with a solid quarter-hour every day of hauling his dead weight back into bed. The entire time he was awake, he barely verbalized, usually sticking to one-word answers to express his needs and not elaborating. Akira didn’t know if he should be worried or not, figuring that it must’ve come as quite the shock to his entire system to be the one stealing his own heart, and spending so much time in his own Palace fighting his own cognitions.

Eventually, he simply decided to wait for Goro for as long as it took and went on about his daily life as a dead man, all while taking into account his comatose other half lying in his bed for the grand majority of the day.

The only critical incident he had to deal with was a missed call from an unknown number on Goro’s personal cellphone, which Akira didn’t dare answer and watched ring into the voicemail. When Goro woke next, Akira told him about it first, and Goro spent his five minutes of wakefulness speaking to who Akira quickly realized was Shido on the other line, feeding him some bullshit lie about being sick with the flu.

When he passed out again right after hanging up, Akira took the phone from him and tucked him back in his bed, realizing how close they were cutting it, and how dangerous their situation was. He could only hope that Goro woke up soon.

It was the uncertainty of Goro’s condition that led Akira not to overthink and worry, coaching himself patience instead. Their sleeping arrangement became a necessary compromise, because although he was a gentleman on days one and two, leaving the bed to Goro, his back also killed him from sleeping on the sofa on day three, at which point he decided to share the bed. Goro was in a coma anyway. The worst that could happen would be that he would miraculously recover and try to suffocate Akira with a pillow out of sheer embarrassment for their situation, at which point Akira would be too rejoiced about his recovery to care.

It was that dismissive, light-hearted attitude that carried him through his days, and Akira was lucky for the decisions that he made, because eventually, the opportunity that arose in his path was the one that both of them had been waiting for. 

On the night of day five, Akira woke up feeling too hot, something itching at him to get up. When he opened his eyes, the stars were still in the sky outside his window cracked open, a cool breeze wafting in and heralding the arrival of winter in Tokyo. He rolled over to find a new comfortable position, and that’s when he realized that Goro was no longer in the bed with him.

“Goro?” he called out blindly, slightly more alert when it came to the safety of his comatose friend. Blearily blinking the sleep out of his eyes, he sat up and glanced around his shadowed room. “Goro, are you here?”

Nobody answered him, but on visual inspection, Akira noted in sheer relief that Goro was on the sofa, hands gripping his phone in his lap.

“You okay?” he called, his last syllable turning into a yawn as he kicked the covers off of himself. The chill bit into his skin and he pulled his sweater sleeves down to stay warm as he approached the boy on the sofa. “What are you doing so late?”

“I’m apologizing,” Goro finally spoke up, sounding surprisingly coherent. His eyes didn’t leave his screen.

“To who?” Akira’s casual curiosity turned into alarm when he sat down next to Goro on the sofa to glance at his phone. The app that was open was that of Goro’s social media, a large paragraph typed into the submission box, waiting to be spread to the entire internet. “Hold on, what’s that?”

“My apology,” Goro repeated, his tone blank and revealing nothing of how he felt.

“No, no, no, wait.” Not wanting to risk anything, Akira stole the phone out of Goro’s hands, careful not to press any buttons by mistake.

“Hey!”

“Goro, you can’t post this online,” Akira said urgently, deleting the entire paragraph as quickly as he could, his eyes scouring over the extensive, overly transparent apology that he had been about to publish. “You’re talking about everything in this- not only will the police arrest you for sure, but Shido could come after you even in jail for risking exposing him.”

“It would be what I deserve, no?” Goro hummed lightly, although he sounded burdened with the weight of the world.

“That’s the change of heart talking,” Akira insisted, scrolling through Goro’s profile to make sure he hadn’t posted anything else. “Did you publish any other posts anywhere?”

“No.” At least Goro didn’t seem to have the intention to lie. Deciding to confiscate his phone for his own safety, Akira pocketed it, turning his eyes to his friend instead.

“Okay, good.” Crisis averted, he tried to get a few more words out of his friend now that he was awake. “Goro, your apology shouldn’t be public like everyone else’s. Your crimes are much too personal. If you want to apologize, it’s best you do it in person, individually.”

“What of the crimes I’ve committed towards the general population?” he retorted, sounding a little dejected. “How do I apologize for those?”

“By helping us take Shido down,” Akira answered without skipping a beat. “You don’t need me to say it, you already know that’s what you need to do most to work through your guilt.”

“Will it be enough?” he asked, glancing up at Akira with doubt swimming in the darkness of his eyes. Moonlight fell in a sliver across his face, illuminating only the corner of his eye, and Akira admired how it glinted nonetheless.

“Yeah, you’ll see. It’ll be just fine,” Akira reassured him as firmly as he could muster.

Goro seemed to consider it for a little while, staring back down at his lap as if a million thoughts ran through his head all at once. Akira watched him fight against himself, not quite daring to touch him, but also unwilling to leave him on his own. Finally reaching some conclusion or another, Goro bent over, putting his head in his hands and running his fingers through his hair with a huff of frustration.

“So this is a change of heart?” he said, hanging his head. “It’s a terrible feeling.”

“Want to tell me about it?” Akira offered, glad that he was talking, at least.

“There’s just so much guilt it’s nearly suffocating,” Goro admitted, swallowing audibly. “Every bone in my body is telling me I deserve to die for what I’ve done, and that even in death, I won’t be able to redeem myself. I keep wondering if it would’ve been better, had I just disappeared without a trace.”

“That’s not true,” Akira rushed to correct him. “The dying part, I mean. You don’t need to die. Don’t… don’t you try anything stupid, Goro.”

“I can’t believe that you, of all people, have to talk me down like this,” Goro chuckled humourlessly. “I hate this. I don’t want to feel like this anymore.”

“How can I help?” Akira offered instead, hoping his urgency didn’t reflect in his tone. “Just talk to me.”

“I don’t know,” Goro admitted, quiet, vulnerable, scared. The night cocooned them protectively as they spoke without any more barriers, trying to figure it out before the sun came up and life began anew.

Akira figured that even if Goro didn’t know what to say, at the very least, he was safe where he could see him. He once again hesitated to touch him to offer comfort, unsure if it would be welcome, instead awkwardly sitting next to Goro and hoping for him to take the lead.

“Akira,” Goro finally said after a few minutes of silence, his voice shaking audibly. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Akira assured him immediately, surprised when Goro lifted his head to glare at him, some of his residual anger in his eyes along with tears.

“No, it’s not,” Goro insisted, a tear rolling down his cheek when he blinked. “You shouldn’t forgive so easily. It’s insulting.”

“What do you-” Akira cut himself off with a sigh, realizing he wouldn’t be getting a logical answer out of Goro in this state. He didn’t say any more, letting Goro continue.

“I don’t hate you,” Goro said, as if he and Akira hadn’t confirmed that fact within the depths of his own heart. “I just didn’t know how to be around you. Before I knew it, you were giving me things that no one ever gave me in my life, and I didn’t know how to behave around you because of it. I’ve never belonged, and I’ve never truly been able to find someone who keeps up with me, so you fulfilling both of those empty spaces for me… I just didn’t know how to handle you.”

“Sorry,” Akira said, mostly out of reflex. “I mean… for coming on so strong.”

“That’s fine,” Goro assured him, another tear rolling delicately off his cheek. It caught the moonlight in its descent, glinting like a diamond before dripping onto Goro’s lap. “I think that, in retrospect, I needed to be pushed. I’m glad it was you.”

Akira didn’t want to admit that his heart jumped at the confession, but it certainly didn’t leave him unfazed either. With Goro so vulnerable in this state of mind, he had to be careful what he said, and cherish all the unguarded sentiments he was expressing. The fragility between them went both ways.

“Thank you for letting me in,” he finally decided to say, and watched how Goro’s shoulders caved inward, his breath hitching in response. He bit his lip harshly, fists clenching on his pyjama pants and twisting, trembling with all the pent-up energy it took for him to hold back.

Hating to see him fight himself once again, Akira threw all caution to the wind and took his leap of faith, just as he always had and always would.

Closing the final gap between them, Akira moved closer until their thighs touched. Snaking his arm around Goro’s shoulders, slow enough for the other boy to push him off if needed, he leaned over and drew him in until Goro’s head rested against his chest. When Goro didn’t resist, boneless and exhausted, Akira tangled his fingers in his long hair and pressed them together, hoping that Goro could hear how hard his heart was beating.

This was the transparency he chose to offer to him in return, giving Goro the time to realize that fact for himself. He knew his message had come across only when Goro shivered against him, relaxing in his hold and letting a few more tears roll down his face.

“I just want this all to be over,” he murmured, shaking minutely as he cried, silent, subtle, never having learned to grieve as he wanted.

“Soon,” Akira promised, smiling to himself when one of the unruly brown locks of hair tickled his chin. Tilting his head just a little, he was able to press his cheek softly against Goro, hearing the quiet hitches in his breathing, and hoping that he found some solace together like this. “Just take your time.”

And Goro did, finally letting himself fall apart in the vacuum left behind by the twisted desires that had given him reason to survive for so long, trembling with the entropy of the void he felt inside of him as all of his lies took flight into the starry sky above them. Everything he knew and had become broke into pieces for him to pick up and rebuild the way he desired for himself in this second beginning. Soft hiccups left his tight throat as he imagined the gargantuan task, and in response, Akira only caressed his hair like a promise.

He wouldn’t have to do anything alone, this time around.

So, he cried, tears dripping onto Akira’s lap for safekeeping, entrusting his sorrows to the only person who’d ever promised to keep them for him. He sobbed quietly, privately, sharing his grief with the only person who could understand it for what it was, for how it made him feel- raw, hurt, terrified. His heart bled in his chest and Goro let it, safe in the arms of the only person who kept him warm when frost danced in the breeze, dust sparkling in the moonlight and settling upon them like snow.

Two halves of a whole, his heart had always whispered, and when Goro shattered this time around, with Akira all around him to keep his fragments together, he believed it.

For the very first time, he believed it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I also played "Our Light" on repeat for the final scene on the sofa but that's just me being a stupid sentimental idiot. I'm still not over Royal's ending aaaaa-
> 
> So there it is! I think that Palaces are a tricky business. You're basically coercing a person into doing something they don't want to do (confess) and although the intention is good, can you imagine how powerless and violated you would feel to have control of your own thoughts and secrets taken away from you? Your mind is the only thing that you can always have to yourself, so how invasive is it for strangers to enter it uninvited and take control of it from you? It must be terrifying. With that in mind, I couldn't envision an outcome in which Akira steals Goro's heart on his own terms, and Goro forgives him for it. Ultimately, Akira doesn't want Goro to confess his crimes, and it's not even about the deadline for his own murder. He just wants to help, and I can't believe that someone like Akechi with such insecure attachment issues would ever rely on him again if he betrayed his trust and coerced him into "salvation". Hence the importance of all the scenes preceding the Palace infiltration- giving Goro the power to control his own destiny and choose salvation for himself. I do think that you adhere much more strongly to personal beliefs when you choose them, rather than when you are imposed them. 
> 
> Janus is not a Shadow, so killing him would not have caused a mental shutdown. However, he did say that he protected Goro's real identity for the "parasitic" ones he created to survive. So, if Janus was killed, Goro's masks would have parasitically invaded his cognition and they would then have become his own true identity. He would've lived his life with the conviction of being Shido's servant and a slave to society, never to have another thought for himself ever again. In his psychotic haze, Akechi doesn't realize that, and tries to kill Janus to finish the job, hence why Akira intervenes with the order to "protect them". Though he's fighting Akechi not to kill Janus, he's ultimately protecting both of them in different ways.
> 
> (Also, it's been three years and I'm still not over how horrible the interrogation scene is. Akira did not deserve that, jesus. I know it's not about him, but y'all know I had to write a segment about my best boy's PTSD as well). 
> 
> I feel like I had more to explain, but it's not coming to me. I've discussed some other stuff in depth in the comments if you're interested, but please beware that the comments are not Royal spoiler-free! Anyway, if anything piqued your interest, please please please talk to me about it!! I'd be so happy to hear from everyone who enjoyed this fic (or didn't, I also totally encourage y'all to tell me what you didn't like!) and I look forward to all the interesting discussions that always seem to pop up from people's feedback. Leave me some of your thoughts for the road! (And don't be shy if you prefer DM-ing/asking me on my social media instead of AO3). 
> 
> Alright, time to exit, stage left! Once again, thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking the time to read this fic even though it's super long and even if it's been done a billion times before!! <3
> 
> \- Cin

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to talk to me any time on social media or in the comments!! <3
> 
> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/CasuallyInvidia)  
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> 
> \- Cin


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